practice of applying his knowledge of the matter in hand in which I believe he was never exceeded by any man. It has been frequently observed that he was a singular instance of a man who had so much distinguished himself by his writings that his conversation not only supported his character as an author, but, in the opinion of many, was superior. Those who have lived with the wits of the age know how rarely this happens. I have had the habit of thinking that this quality, as well as others of the same kind, are possessed in consequence of accidental circumstances attending his life. What Dr. Johnson said a few days before his death of his disposition to insanity was no new discovery to those who were intimate with him. The character of Imlac in Rasselas,' I always considered as a comment on his own conduct, which he himself practised, and as it now appears very successfully, since we know he continued to possess his understanding in its full vigour to the last. Solitude to him was horror; nor would he ever trust himself alone but when employed in writing or reading. He has often begged me to go home with him to prevent his being alone in the coach. Any company was better than none: by which he connected himself with many mean persons whose presence he could command. For this purpose he established a Club at a little ale-house in Essex Street, composed of a strange mixture of very learned and very ingenious odd people. Of the former were Dr. Heberden, Mr. Windham, Mr. Boswell, Mr. Stevens, Mr. Paradise. Those of the latter I do not think proper to enumerate. By thus living, by necessity, so much in company, more perhaps than any other studious man whatever, he had acquired by habit, and which habit alone can give, that facility, and we may add docility of mind, by which he was so much distinguished. Another circumstance likewise contributed not a little to the power which he had of expressing himself, which was a rule, which he said he always practised on every occasion, of speaking his best, whether the person to whom he addressed himself was or was not capable of comprehending him. If,' says he, 'I am understood, my labour is not lost. If it is above their comprehension, there is some gratification, though it is the admiration of ignorance;' and he said those were the most sincere admirers; and quoted Baxter, who made it a rule never to preach a sermon without saying something which he knew was beyond the comprehension of his audience in order to inspire their admiration. Dr. Johnson, by this continual practice, made that a habit which was at first an exertion; for every person who knew him must have observed that the moment he was left out of the conversation, whether from his deafness or from whatever cause, but a few minutes without speaking or listening, his mind appeared to be preparing itself. He fell into a reverie accompanied with strange antic gestures; but this he never did when his mind was engaged by the conversation. [These were] therefore improperly called by as well as by others, convulsions, which imply involuntary contortions; whereas, a word addressed to him, his attention was recovered. Sometimes, indeed, it would be near a minute before he would give an answer, looking as if he laboured to bring his mind to bear on the question. He He had "In arguing he did not trouble himself with much circumlocution, but opposed, directly and abruptly, his antagonist. He fought with all sorts [of] weapons; [with] ludicrous comparisons and similes; [and] if all failed, with rudeness and overbearing. thought it necessary never to be worsted in argument. one virtue which I hold one of the most difficult to practise. After the heat of contest was over, if he had been informed that his antagonist resented his rudeness, he was the first to seek after a reconciliation; and of his virtues the most distinguished was his love of truth. "He sometimes, it must be confessed, covered his ignorance by generals rather than appear ignorant. You will wonder to hear a person who loved him so sincerely speak thus freely of his friend, but, you must recollect I am not writing his panegyrick, but as if upon oath, not only to give the truth but the whole truth. "His pride had no meanness in it; there was nothing little or mean about him. Truth, whether in great or little matters, he held sacred. "From the violation of truth, he said, in great things your character or your interest was affected, in lesser things your pleasure is equally destroyed. I remember, on his relating some incident, I added something to his relation which I supposed might likewise have happened: 'It would have been a better story,' says he, if it had been so; but it was not.' Our friend Dr. Goldsmith was not so scrupulous; but he said he only indulged himself in white lyes, light as feathers, which he threw up in the air, and on whomever they fall, nobody was hurt. 'I wish,' says Dr. Johnson, 'you would take the trouble of moulting your feathers.' VI. A A "I once inadvertently put him in a situation from which none but a man of perfect integrity could extricate himself. I pointed at some lines in the 'Traveller' which I told [him] I was sure he wrote. He hesitated a little; during this hesitation I recollected myself, that as I knew he would not lye I put him in a cleft stick, and should have had but my due if he had given me a rough answer; but he only said, 'Sir, I did not write them, but that you may not imagine that I have wrote more than I really have, the utmost I have wrote in that poem, to the best of my recollection, is not more than eighteen lines.' It must be observed there was then an opinion about town that Dr. Johnson wrote the whole poem for his friend, who was then in a manner an unknown writer, This conduct appears to me to be in the highest degree correct and refined. If the Dr.'s conscience would have let him told a lye, the matter would have been soon over, "As in his writings not a line can be found which a saint would wish to blot, so in his life he would never suffer the least immorality [or] indecency of conversation, [or any thing] contrary to virtue or piety to proceed without a severe check, which no elevation of rank exempted them from. .... "Custom, or politeness, or courtly manners has authorised such an Eastern hyperbolical style of compliment, that part of Dr. Johnson's character for rudeness of manners must be put to the account of this scrupulous adherence to truth. His obstinate silence, whilst all the company were in raptures, vying with each other who should pepper highest, was considered as rudeness or ill-nature. "During his last illness, when all hope was at an end, he appeared to be quieter and more resigned. His approaching dissolution was always present to his mind. A few days before he died, Mr. Langton and myself only present, he said he had been a great sinner, but he hoped he had given no bad example to his friends; that he had some consolation in reflecting that he had never denied Christ, and repeated the text 'Whoever denies me, &c.' We were both very ready to assure him that we were conscious that we were better and wiser from his life and conversation; and that, so far from denying Christ, he had been, in this age, his greatest champion. He "Sometimes a flash of wit escaped him as if involuntary. was asked how he liked the new man that was hired to watch by him. 'Instead of watching,' says he, 'he sleeps like a dormouse; and when he helps me to bed he is awkward as a turnspit dog the first time he is put into the wheel.' "The Christian religion was with him such a certain and established truth, that he considered it as a kind of profanation to hold any argument about its truth. "He was not easily imposed upon by professions to honesty and candour; but he appeared to have little suspicion of hypocrisy in religion. "His passions were like those of other men, the difference only lay in his keeping a stricter watch over himself. In petty circumstances this wayward disposition appeared, but in greater things he thought it worth while to summon his recollection and be always on his guard. [To them that loved him not] as rough as winter; to those who sought his love, as mild as summer1 -many instances will readily occur to those who knew him intimately, of the guard which he endeavoured always to keep over himself. ... "The prejudices he had to countries did not extend to individuals. The chief prejudice in which he indulged himself was against Scotland, though he had the most cordial friendship with individuals [of that country.] This he used to vindicate as a duty. In respect to Frenchmen he rather laughed at himself, but it was insurmountable. He considered every foreigner as a fool till they had convinced him of the contrary. Against the Irish he entertained no prejudice, he thought they united themselves very well with us; but the Scotch, when in England, united and made a party by employing only Scotch servants and Scotch tradesmen. He held it right for Englishmen to oppose a party against them. "This reasoning would have more weight if the numbers were equal. A small body in a larger has such great disadvantages that I fear are scarce counterbalanced by whatever little combination they can make. A general combination against them would be little short of annihilation. "We are both of Dr. Johnson's school. acknowledge the highest obligations to him. For my own part, I 1 Reynolds here recollects, imperfectly, Cromwell's eulogium on Wolsey:- Lofty and sour to them that lov'd him not, But to the men that sought him sweet as summer." have formed my mind, and to have brushed from it a great deal of rubbish. Those very people whom he has brought to think rightly will occasionally criticise the opinions of their master when he nods. But we should always recollect that it is he himself who taught us and enabled us to do it. "The drawback of his character is entertaining prejudices on very slight foundations; giving an opinion, perhaps, first at random, but from its being contradicted he thinks himself obliged always to support [it], or, if he cannot support, still not to acquiesce [in the opposite opinion]. Of this I remember an instance of a defect or forgetfulness in his ' Dictionary.' I asked him how he came not to correct it in the second edition. 'No,' says he, they made so much of it that I would not flatter them by altering it!' "From passion, from the prevalence of his disposition for the minute, he was constantly acting contrary to his own reason, to his principles. It was a frequent subject of animadversion with him, how much authors lost of the pleasure and comfort of life by their carrying always about them their own consequence and celebrity. Yet no man in mixed company,—not to his intimates, certainly, for that would be an insupportable slavery,—ever acted with more circumspection to his character than himself. The most light and airy dispute was with him a dispute on the arena. He fought on every occasion as if his whole reputation depended upon the victory of the minute, and he fought with all the weapons. If he was foiled in argument he had recourse to abuse and rudeness. That he was not thus strenuous for victory with his intimates in tête-à-tête conversations when there were no witnesses, may be easily believed. Indeed, had his conduct been to them the same as he exhibited to the public, his friends could never have entertained that love and affection for him, which they all feel and profess for his memory. "But what appears extraordinary is that a man who so well saw, himself, the folly of this ambition of shining, of speaking, or of acting always according to the character [he] imagined [he] possessed in the world, should produce himself the greatest example of a contrary conduct. "Were I to write the Life of Dr. Johnson I would labour this point, to separate his conduct that proceeded from his passions, and what proceeded from his reason, from his natural disposition seen in his quiet hours.” |