BOSWELL. "A very pretty allusion." JOHNSON. "Yes, indeed." BOSWELL. "And as a lady adjusts her dress before a mirror, a man adjusts his character by looking at his journal.” I next year found the very same thought in Atterbury's "Funeral Sermon on Lady Cutts;" where, having mentioned her Diary, he says, "In this glass she every day dressed her mind." This is a proof of coincidence, and not of plagiarism; for I had never read that sermon before.

Next morning, while we were at breakfast, Johnson gave a very earnest recommendation of what he himself practised with the utmost conscientiousness: I mean a strict attention to truth even in the most minute particulars. "Accustom your children," said he, "constantly to this: if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them you do not know where deviation from truth will end." BOSWELL. "It may come to the door: and when once an account is at all varied in one circumstance, it may by degrees be varied so as to be totally different from what really happened." Our lively hostess, whose fancy was impatient of the rein, fidgeted at this, and ventured to say, "Nay, this is too much. If Dr. Johnson should forbid me to drink tea, I would comply, as I should feel the restraint only twice a day; but little variations in narrative must happen a thousand times a day, if one is not perpetually watching." JOHNSON. "Well, Madam, and you ought to be perpetually watching. It is more from carelessness about truth, than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world."

In his review of Dr. Warton's "Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope," Johnson has given the following salutary caution upon this subject: "Nothing but experience could evince the frequency of false information, or enable any man to conceive that so many groundless reports should be propagated, as every man of eminence may hear of himself. Some men relate what they think as what they know; some men of confused memories and habitual inaccuracy ascribe to one man what belongs to another; and some talk on without thought

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or care. A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters."1 Had he lived to read what Sir John Hawkins and Mrs. Piozzi have related concerning himself, how much would he have found his observation illustrated! He was, indeed, so much impressed with the prevalence of falsehood, voluntary or unD'intentional, that I never knew any person who, upon hearing an extraordinary circumstance told, discovered more of the incredulus odi. He would say, with a significant look and decisive tone, "It is not so. Do not tell this again." He inculcated upon all his friends the importance of perpetual vigilance against the slightest degrees of falsehood; the effect of which, as Sir Joshua Reynolds observed to me, has been, that all who were of his school are distinguished for a love of truth and accuracy, which they would not have possessed in the same degree if they had not been acquainted with Johnson.

Talking of ghosts, he said, “It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it."

He said, "John Wesley's conversation is good, but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour.

'Literary Magazine, 1756, p. 37.

Johnson's Works, Oxford Ed., vol. vi., p. 42.—Editor.

The following plausible but over-prudent counsel on this subject is given by an Italian writer, quoted by Redi, "De generatione insectorum," with the epithet of “divini poeta."

"Sempre a quel ver che ha faccia di menzogna

De' l'uom chiuder le labbra finch' ei puote;
Però che senza colpa fa vergogna."

Boswell had not, apparently, discovered that the divine poet was Dante;
and that the lines were taken from the Inferno, xvi. 124-6.

thus rendered by Wright :

แ "That truth which bears the semblance of a lie,
To pass the lips man never should allow ;
Though crime be absent, still disgrace is nigh."

They are

Editor.

This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have out his talk, as I do."

On Friday, April 3, I dined with him in London, in a company' where were present several eminent men, whom I shall not name, but distinguish their parts in the conversation by different letters.

F. "I have been looking at this famous antique marble dog of Mr. Jennings,' valued at a thousand guineas, said to be

1 The Club. This seems to be the only instance in which Mr. Boswell has ventured to give in any detail the conversation of that society; and we see that on this occasion he has not mentioned the names, but has disguised the parties under what look like initials. All these letters, however even with the names of the company before us-it is not easy to appropriate. It appears by the books of the Club, as Mr. Hatchett informed me, that the company on that evening consisted of Dr. Johnson, president, Mr. Burke, Mr. Boswell, Dr. George Fordyce, Mr. Gibbon, Dr. Johnson (again named), Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lord Upper Ossory, and Mr. R. B. Sheridan. In Mr. Boswell's account, the letter E. no doubt stands for Edmund Burke; F., in allusion to his family name of Fitzpatrick, probably means Lord Upper Ossory; but the appropriation of the other letters is very difficult. The medical observations, and the allusions to Holland, made by C., suggest that Dr. George Fordyce, a physician who was educated in Holland, was meant, although why he should have been designated by C. I cannot guess. R. may mean Richard B. Sheridan, then a young man not yet in Parliament. The story of Sir Godfrey Kneller made me doubt whether P. was not Sir Joshua, President of the Royal Academy, but the initial J., as well as the style of observations made by him, seem to indicate Sir Joshua. If this be so, then P. would be Gibbon, who, perhaps, from Johnson's coming late, or some accidental cause, may have acted as president of the night; and it is to be observed that P. puts the question. These latter conjectures are by no means satisfactory to my mind. Sir James Mackintosh and Mr. Chalmers were equally dubious. -Croker.

2 Henry Constantine Jennings, the only son of Jennings, Esq., of Shiplake, in the county of Oxford, "was born in 1731, O.S." His father is said to have been a cousin of Sarah Jennings, the celebrated Duchess of Marlborough. When he was seventeen he obtained a commission in the first regiment of Foot Guards, which, however, he quickly threw up, and then entered on the grand tour. While at Rome he bought for a moderate sum the marble statue of a dog, for which he afterwards refused, as he said, the sum of £1,400. The collections he amassed, his ill success on the turf compelled him to sell. "This day (April 4) was sold for one thousand guineas the celebrated dog known to the virtuosi by the name of

Alcibiades' dog." JOHNSON. "His tail then must be docked. That was the mark of Alcibiades' dog."1 E. "A thousand guineas! The representation of no animal whatever is worth so much. At this rate, a dead dog would, indeed, be better than a living lion." JOHNSON. "Sir, it is not the worth of the thing, but of the skill in forming it, which is so highly estimated. Every thing that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable. The first man who balanced a straw upon his nose; Johnson, who rode upon three horses at a time; in short, all such men deserve the applause of mankind, not on account of the use of what they did, but of the dexterity which they exhibited." BOSWELL. "Yet a misapplication of time and assiduity is not to be encouraged. Addison, in one of his Spectators,' commends the judgment of a king, who, as a suitable reward to a man that by long perseverance had attained to the art of throwing a barley-corn through the eye of a needle, gave him a bushel of barley." JOHNSON. “He must have been a king of Scotland, where barley is scarce." F. "One of the most remarkable antique figures of an animal is the boar at Florence." JOHNSON. "The first boar that is well made in marble should be preserved as a wonder. When men arrive at a facility of making boars well, then the workmanship is not of such value; but they should, however, be preserved as examples, and as a greater security for the restoration of the art, should it be lost."

E. "We hear prodigious complaints at present of emigration. I am convinced that emigration makes a country more populous." J. "That sounds very much like a paradox." E.

Alcibiades' dog, and supposed to be the most exquisite piece of sculpture of the kind in the world."-Annual Register, 1778, p. 174. It was bought by a member of the Society of Dilettanti, Mr. Charles Duncombe, M.P. for Yorkshire, and is now in the gallery at Faversham Park. The follies and eccentricities of Jennings's life are described at greater length than they deserve, in the volume for 1820 of the Annual Biography and Obituary.-Editor.

'The story of Alcibiades cutting off his dog's tail, and his reasons for the act, are told in Plutarch's Life of Alcibiades, cap. ix.—Editor.

1

Exportation of men, like exportation of all other commodities, makes more be produced." JOHNSON. "But there would be more people were there not emigration, provided there were food for more." E. "No; leave a few breeders, and you'll have more people than if there were no emigration." JOHNSON. "Nay, Sir, it is plain there will be more people, if there are more breeders. Thirty cows in good pasture will produce more calves than ten cows, provided they have good bulls." E. "There are bulls enough in Ireland." JOHNSON (smiling). "So, Sir, I should think from your argument." BOSWELL. "You said exportation of men, like exportation of other commodities, makes more be produced. But a bounty is given to encourage the exportation of corn, and no bounty is given for the exportation of men; though, indeed, those who go gain by it." R. "But the bounty on the exportation of corn is paid at home." E. "That's the same thing." JOHNSON. "No, Sir." R. "A man who stays at home gains nothing by his neighbour's emigrating" BOSWELL. “I can understand that emigration may be the cause that more people may be produced in a country; but the country will not therefore be the more populous; for the people issue from it. It can only be said that there is a flow of people. It is an encouragement to have children, to know that they can get a living by emigration." R. "Yes, if there were an emigration of children under six years of age. But they don't emigrate till they could earn their livelihood in some way at home." C. "It is remarkable that the most unhealthy countries, where there are the most destructive diseases, such as Egypt and Bengal, are the most populous." JOHNSON. "Countries which are the most populous have the most destructive diseases. That is the true state of the proposition." C. "Holland is very unhealthy, yet it is exceedingly populous." JOHNSON. "I know not that Holland is unhealthy. But its populousness is owing to

All this, as Mr. Boswell elsewhere says, must be a very imperfect record of the conversation. Mr. Burke, no doubt, meant to allude (perhaps with a double meaning) to the superabundant population of Ireland, -Croker.