Hope is an amuse almost, but a rough blast bursts it at once. ment rather than a good, and adapted to none but very tranquil minds." The truth is, Mr. Johnson hated what we call unprofitable chat; and to a gentleman who had disserted some time about the natural history of the mouse- "I wonder what such a one would have said (cried Johnson), if he had ever had the luck to see a lion!" I well remember that at Brighthelmstone once, when he was not present, Mr. Beauclerc asserted that he was afraid of spirits; and I, who was secretly offended at the charge, asked him, the first opportunity I could find, What ground he had ever given to the world for such a report? "I can (replied he) recollect nothing nearer it, than my telling Dr. Lawrence many years ago, that a long time after my poor mother's death, I heard her voice call Sam!" "What answer did the Doctor make to your story, Sir, said I?" "None in the world," (replied he ;) and suddenly changed the conversation. Now as Mr. Johnson had a most unshaken faith, without any mixture of credulity, this story must either have been strictly true, or his persuasion of its truth the effect of disordered spirits. I relate the anecdote precisely as he told it me; but could not prevail on him to draw out the talk into length for further satisfaction of my curiosity. As Johnson was the firmest of believers without being credulous, so he was the most charitable of mortals without being what we call an active friend.1 Admirable at giving counsel, no man saw his way so clearly; but he would not stir a finger for the assistance of those to whom he was willing enough to give advice: besides that, he had principles of laziness, and could be indolent by rule. To hinder your death, or procure you a dinner, I mean if really in want of one; his earnestness, his exertions could not be prevented, though health and purse and ease were all destroyed by their violence. If you wanted a slight favour, you must apply to people of other dispositions; for not a step would Johnson move to obtain a man a vote in a society, to repay a compliment which might be useful or pleasing, to write a letter of request, or to obtain a hundred pounds a year more for a friend, who perhaps had already two or three. No force could urge him to diligence, no importunity could conquer his resolution of standing still. "What good are we doing with all this ado (would he say)? 1 See Boswell on this passage, vol. iv. (June 30, 1784). dearest Lady, let's hear no more of it!" I have however more than once in my life forced him on such services, but with extreme difficulty. We parted at his door one evening when I had teized him for many weeks to write a recommendatory letter of a little boy to his schoolmaster; and after he had faithfully promised to do this prodigious feat before we met again" Do not forget dear Dick, Sir," said I, as he went out of the coach; he turned back, stood still two minutes on the carriage-step-" When I have written my letter for Dick, I may hang myself, mayn't I?”—and turned away in a very ill humour indeed. Though apt enough to take sudden likings or aversions to people he occasionally met, he would never hastily pronounce upon their character; and when seeing him justly delighted with Solander's conversation, I observed once that he was a man of great parts who talked from a full mind—“It may be so (said Mr. Johnson), but you cannot know it yet, nor I neither: the pump works well, to be sure! but how, I wonder, are we to decide in so very short an acquaintance, whether it is supplied by a spring or a reservoir ? "He always made a great difference in his esteem between talents and erudition; and when he saw a person eminent for literature, though wholly unconversible, it fretted him. "Teaching such tonies (said he to me one day) is like setting a lady's diamonds in lead, which only obscures the lustre of the stone, and makes the possessor ashamed on't." Useful and what we call every-day knowledge had the most of his just praise. "Let your boy learn arithmetic, dear Madam," was his advice to the mother of a rich young heir: "he will not then be a prey to every rascal which this town swarms with: teach him the value of money, and how to reckon it; ignorance to a wealthy lad of one-and-twenty is only so much fat to a sick sheep it just serves to call the rooks about him." "And all that prey in vice or fully These improviso lines, making part of a long copy of verses which my regard for the youth on whose birth-day they were written obliges me to suppress lest they should give him pain, shew a mind of surprising activity and warmth; the more so as he was past seventy years of age when he composed them: but nothing more certainly offended Mr. Johnson, than the idea of a man's faculties (mental ones I mean) decaying by time; "It is not true, Sir (would he say); what a man could once do, he would always do, unless indeed by dint of vicious indolence, and compliance with the nephews and nieces who crowd round an old fellow, and help to tuck him in, till he, contented with the exchange of fame for ease, e'en resolves to let them set the pillows at his back, and gives no further proof of his existence than just to suck the jelly that prolongs it." For such a life or such a death Dr. Johnson was indeed never intended by Providence: his mind was like a warm climate, which brings everything to perfection suddenly and vigorously, not like the alembicated productions of artificial fire, which always betray the difficulty of bringing them forth when their size is disproportionate to their flavour. Je ferois un Roman tout comme un autre, mais la vie n'est point un Roman, says a famous French writer; and this was so certainly the opinion of the Author of the "Rambler," that all his conversation precepts tended towards the dispersion of romantic ideas, and were chiefly intended to promote the cultivation of "That which before thee lies in daily life." MILTON. And when he talked of authors, his praise went spontaneously to such passages as are sure in his own phrase to leave something behind them useful on common occasions, or observant of common manners. For example, it was not the two last, but the two first, volumes of" Clarissa" that he prized; "For give me a sick bed, and a dying lady (said he), and I'll be pathetic myself: but Richardson had picked the kernel of life (he said), while Fielding was contented with the husk."—It was not King Lear cursing his daughters, or deprecating the storm, that I remember his commendations of; but Iago's ingenious malice, and subtle revenge; or prince Hal's gay compliance with the vices of Falstaff, whom he all along despised. Those plays had indeed no rivals in Johnson's favour: "No man but Shakespeare (he said) could have drawn Sir John." His manner of criticising and commending Addison's prose was the same in conversation as we read it in the printed strictures, and many of the expressions used have been heard to fall from him on common occasions. It was notwithstanding observable enough (or I fancied so), that he did never like, though he always thought fit to praise it; and his praises resembled those of a man who extols the superior elegance of high painted porcelain, while he himself always chuses to eat off plate. I told him so one day, and he neither denied it nor appeared displeased. Of the pathetick in poetry he never liked to speak, and the only passage I ever heard him applaud as particularly tender in any common book, was Jane Shore's exclamation in the last act, “Forgive me! but forgive me!” It was not however from the want of a susceptible heart that he hated to cite tender expressions, for he was more strongly and more violently affected by the force of words representing ideas capable of affecting him at all, than any other man in the world I believe; and when he would try to repeat the celebrated Prosa Ecclesiastica pro Mortuis, as it is called, beginning Dies ira, Dies illa, he could never pass the stanza ending thus, Tantus labor non sit cassus, without bursting into a flood of tears; which sensibility I used to quote against him when he would inveigh against devotional poetry, and protest that all religious verses were cold and feeble, and unworthy the subject, which ought to be treated with higher reverence, he said, than either poets or painters could presume to excite or bestow. Nor can any thing be a stronger proof of Dr. Johnson piety than such an expression; for his idea of poetry was magnificent indeed, and very fully was he persuaded of its superiority over every other talent bestowed by heaven on man. His chapter upon that particular subject in his "Rasselas," is really written from the fulness of his heart, and quite in his best manner I think. I am not so sure that this is the proper place to mention his writing that surprising little volume in a week or ten days time, in order to obtain money for his journey to Litchfield when his mother lay upon her last sick bed. Promptitude of thought indeed, and quickness of expression, were among the peculiar felicities of Johnson: his notions rose up like the dragon's teeth sowed by Cadmus all ready clothed, and in bright armour too, fit for immediate battle. He was therefore (as somebody is said to have expressed it) a tremendous 1 See Life, vol. i., p. 269. converser, and few people ventured to try their skill against an antagonist with whom contention was so hopeless. One gentleman, however, who dined at a nobleman's house in his company and that of Mr. Thrale, to whom I was obliged for the anecdote, was willing to enter the lists in defence of King William's character, and having opposed and contradicted Johnson two or three times petulantly enough; the master of the house began to feel uneasy, and expect disagreeable consequences to avoid which he said, loud enough for the Doctor to hear, "Our friend here has no meaning now in all this, except just to relate at club to-morrow how he teized Johnson at dinner to-day-this is all to do himself honour." "No, upon my word," replied the other, "I see no honour in it, whatever you may do." "Well, Sir! (returned Mr. Johnson sternly) if you do not see the honour, I am sure I feel the disgrace." A young fellow, less confident of his own abilities, lamenting one day that he had lost all his Greek—“I believe it happened at the same time, Sir (said Johnson), that I lost all my large estate in Yorkshire." But however roughly he might be suddenly provoked to treat a harmless exertion of vanity, he did not wish to inflict the pain he gave, and was sometimes very sorry when he perceived the people to smart more than they deserved. "How harshly you treated that man to-day," said I once, "who harangued us so about gardening "—"I am sorry (said he) if I vexed the creature, for there certainly is no harm in a fellow's rattling a rattle-box, only don't let him think that he thunders."-The Lincolnshire lady who shewed him a grotto she had been making, came off no better as I remember: "Would it not be a pretty cool habitation in summer?" said she, "Mr. Johnson!" "I think it would, Madam (replied he),—for a toad.” All desire of distinction indeed had a sure enemy in Mr. Johnson. We met a friend driving six very small ponies, and stopt to admire them. "Why does nobody (said our doctor) begin the fashion of driving six spavined horses, all spavined of the same leg? it would have a mighty pretty effect, and produce the distinction of doing something worse than the common way." When Mr. Johnson had a mind to compliment any one, he did 1 See Boswell's remarks on this story, Life, vol. iv. (June 30, 1784). |