he evaded the question, thus, 'Sir, I do not say that it may not be made a very good translation.' Here nothing whatever in favour of the performance was affirmed, and yet the writer was not shocked. A printed Ode to the Warlike Genius of Britain came next in review. The bard was a lank, bony figure, with short black hair; he was writhing himself in agitation while Johnson read, and showing his teeth in a grin of earnestness, exclaimed in broken sentences, and in a keen, sharp tone, 'Is that poetry, sir? Is it Pindar?" JOHNSON: 'Why, sir, there is a great deal of what is called poetry.' Then turning to me, the poet cried, 'My muse has not been long upon the town, and (pointing to the Ode) it trembles under the hand of the great critic.' Johnson in a tone of displeasure asked him, 'Why do you praise Anson?' I did not trouble him by asking his reason for this question. He proceeded, 'Here is an error, sir; you have made Genius feminine.''Palpable, sir,' cried the enthusiast; 'I know it. But (in a lower tone) it was to pay a compliment to the Duchess of Devonshire, with which her Grace was pleased. She is walking across Coxheath, in the military uniform, and I suppose her to be the Genius of Britain. JOHNBON: 'Sir, you are giving a reason for it; but that will not make it right. You may have a reason why two and two should make five; but they will still make but four.'

Although I was several times with him in the course of the following days, such it seems were my occupations, or such my negligence, that I have preserved no memorial of his conversation till Friday, March 26, when I visited him. He said he expected to be attacked on account of his Lives of the Poets. However,' said he, 'I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse. An assault may be unsuccessful; you may have more men killed than you kill; but if you starve the town, you are sure of victory.'

Talking of a friend of ours associating with persons of very discordant principles and characters, I said he was a very universal man, quite a man of the world. JOHNSON: 'Yes, sir, but one may be so much a man of the world, as to be nothing in the world. I remember a passage in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge-"I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing."" BOSWELL: 'That was a fine passage.' JOHNson: 'Yes, sir; there was another fine passage, too, which he struck out: "When I was a young man, being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions. But I soon gave this over; for I found that generally what was new was false."" I said I did not like to sit with people of whom I had not a good opinion. JOHNSON: 'But you must

not indulge your delicacy too much, or you will be a tête-à-tête man all your life.'

During my stay in London this spring, I find I was unaccountably negligent in preserving Johnson's sayings, more so than at any time when I was happy enough to have an opportunity of hearing his wisdom and wit. There is no help for it now. I must content myself with presenting such scraps as I have. But I am nevertheless ashamed and vexed to think how much has been lost. It is not that there was a bad crop this year; but that I was not sufficiently careful in gathering it in. I therefore, in some instances, can only exhibit a few detached fragments.

Talking of the wonderful concealment of the author of the celebrated letters signed Junius, he said, 'I should have believed Burke to be Junius, because I know no man but Burke who is capable of writing these letters; but Burke spontaneously denied it to me. The case would have been different, had I asked him if he was the author; a man so questioned, as to an anonymous publication, may think he has a right to deny it.'

He observed that his old friend Mr. Sheridan had been honoured with extraordinary attention in his own country, by having had an exception made in his favour in an Irish Act of Parliament concerning insolvent debtors. 'Thus to be singled out,' said he, 'by a legislature, as an object of public consideration and kindness, is a proof of no common merit.'

At Streatham, on Monday, March 29, at breakfast, he maintained that a father had no right to control the inclinations of his daughters in marriage.

On Wednesday, March 31, when I visited him and confessed an excess of which I had very seldom been guilty-that I had spent a whole night in playing at cards, and that I could not look back on it with satisfaction-instead of a harsh animadversion, he mildly said, 'Alas, sir, on how few things can we look back with satis

faction!'

On Thursday, April 1, he commended one of the Dukes of Devonshire for 'a dogged veracity.' He said, too, 'London is nothing to some people; but to a man whose pleasure is intellectual, London is the place. And there is no place where ecomony can be so well practised as in London: more can be had here for the money, even by ladies, than anywhere else. You cannot play tricks with your fortune in a small place; you must make an uniform appearance. Here a lady may have well-furnished apartments, an elegant dress, without any meat in her kitchen."

I was amused by considering with how much ease and coolness he could write or talk to a friend, exhorting him not to suppose that happiness was not to be found as well in other places as in London; when he himself was at all times sensible of its being, comparatively speaking, a heaven upon earth. The truth is, that by those who from sagacity, attention, and experience, have learnt the full advantage of London, its pre-eminence over every other place, not only for variety of enjoyment, but for comfort, will be felt with a philosophical exultation. The freedom from remark and petty censure, with which life may be passed there, is a circumstance which a man who knows the teasing restraint of a narrow circle must relish highly. Mr. Burke, whose orderly and amiable domestic habits might make the eye of observation less irksome to him than to most men, said once very plea. santly in my hearing, 'Though I have the honour to represent Bristol, I should not like to live there; I should be obliged to be so much upon my good behaviour.' In London, a man may live in splendid society at one time, and in frugal retirement at another, without animadversion. There, and there alone, a man's own house is truly his castle, in which he can be in perfect safety from intrusion whenever he pleases. I never shall forget how well this was expressed to me one day by Mr. Meynell: 'The chief advantage of London,' said he, 'is, that a man is always so near his burrow.'

He said of one of his old acquaintances, 'He Is very fit for a travelling governor. He knows French very well. He is a man of good principles; and there would be no danger that a young gentleman should catch his manner; for it is so very bad, that it must be avoided. In that respect he would be like the drunken Helot.'

A gentleman has informed me, that Johnson said of the same person, 'Sir, he has the most inverted understanding of any man whom I have ever known.'

On Friday, April 2, being Good Friday, I visited him in the morning as usual: and finding that we insensibly fell into a train of ridicule upon the foibles of one of our friends, a very worthy man, I, by way of a check, quoted some good admonition from The Government of the Tongue that very pious book. It happened also remarkably enough that the subject of the sermon preached to us to-day by Dr. Burrows, the rector of St. Clement Danes, was the certainty that at the last day we must give an account of the 'deeds done in the body;' and amongst various acts of culpability he mentioned evil-speaking. As we were moving slowly along in the crowd from church, Johnson jogged my elbow, and said, 'Did you attend to the sermon?'-' Yes, sir,' said I, 'it was very applicable to us.' He, however, stood upon the defensive. 'Why, sir, the sense of ridicule is given us, and may be lawfully used. The author of The Government of the Tongue would have us treat all men alike.'

In the interval between morning and evening service, he endeavoured to employ himself earnestly in devotional exercise; and, as he has mentioned in his Prayers and Meditations

[p. 173], gave me Les Pensées de Pascal, that I might not interrupt him. I preserve the book with reverence. His presenting it to me is marked upon it with his own hand, and I have found in it a truly divine unction. We went to church again in the afternoon.

On Saturday, April 3, I visited him at night, and found him sitting in Mrs. Williams's room, with her, and one who he afterwards told me was a natural son1 of the second Lord Southwell. The table had a singular appearance, being covered with a heterogeneous assemblage of oysters and porter for his company, and tea for himself. I mentioned my having heard an eminent physician, who was himself a Christian, argue in favour of universal toleration, and maintain that no man could be hurt by another man's differing from him in opinion. JOHNSON: 'Sir, you are, to a certain degree, hurt by knowing that even one man does not believe.'

On Easter-day, after solemn service at St. Paul's, I dined with him. Mr. Allen, the printer, was also his guest. He was uncommonly silent; and I have not written down anything, except a single curious fact, which, having the sanction of his inflexible veracity, may be received as a striking instance of human insensibility and inconsideration. As he was passing by a fishmonger, who was skinning an eel alive, he heard him 'curse it because it would not lie still.'

On Wednesday, April 7, I dined with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds's. I have not marked what company was there. Johnson harangued upon the qualities of different liquors; and spoke with great contempt of claret, as so weak, that 'a man would be drowned by it before it made him drunk.' He was persuaded to drink one glass of it, that he might judge, not from recollection, which might be dim, but from immediate sensation. He shook his head, and said, 'Poor stuff! No, sir, claret is the liquor for boys; port for men: but he who aspires to be a hero (smiling) must drink brandy. In the first place, the flavour of brandy is most grateful to the palate; and then brandy will do soonest for a man what drinking can do for him. There are, indeed, few who are able to drink brandy. That is a power rather to be wished for than attained. And yet,' proceeded he, 'as in all pleasure hope is a considerable part, I know not but fruition comes too quick by brandy. Florence wine I think the worst; it is wine only to the eye; it is wine neither while you are drinking it, nor after you have drunk it: it neither pleases the taste nor exhilarates the spirits.' I reminded him how heartily he and I used to drink wine together, when we were first acquainted; and how I used to have a headache after sitting up with him. He did not like to have this recalled, or, perhaps, thinking that

1 Mr. Mauritius Lowe, a painter.-MALONE.

I boasted improperly, resolved to have a witty stroke at me: 'Nay, sir, it was not the wine that made your head ache, but the sense that I put into it.' BOSWELL: 'What, sir; will sense make the head ache?" JOHNSON: 'Yes, sir (with a smile), when it is not used to it.'-No man who has a true relish of pleasantry could be offended at this; especially if Johnson in a long intimacy had given him repeated proofs of his regard and good estimation. I used to say, that as he had given me £1000 in praise, he had a good right now and then to take a guinea from me.

On Thursday, April 8, I dined with him at Mr. Allan Ramsay's, with Lord Graham and some other company. We talked of Shakspeare's witches. JOHNSON: 'They are beings of his own creation; they are a compound of malignity and meanness, without any abilities; and are quite different from the Italian magician. King James says, in his Damonology, Magicians command the devils: witches are their servants." The Italian magicians are elegant beings.' RAMSAY: 'Opera witches, not Drury Lane witches.' Johnson observed, that abilities might be employed in a narrow sphere, as in getting money, which he said he believed no man could do, without vigorous parts, though concentrated to a point. RAMSAY: 'Yes, like a strong horse in a mill, he pulls better.'

Lord Graham, while he praised the beauty of Loch Lomond, on the banks of which is his family seat, complained of the climate, and said he could not bear it. JOHNSON: 'Nay, my Lord, don't talk so; you may bear it well enough. Your ancestors have borne it more years than I can tell. This was a handsome compliment to the antiquity of the House of Montrose. His Lordship told me afterwards, that he had only affected to complain of the climate; lest, if he had spoken as favourably of his country as he really thought, Dr. Johnson might have attacked it. Johnson was very courteous to Lady Margaret Macdonald. 'Madam,' said he, 'when I was in the Isle of Skye, I heard of the people running to take the stones off the road, lest Lady Margaret's horse should stumble.'

Lord Graham commended Dr. Drummond at Naples as a man of extraordinary talents; and added, that he had a great love of liberty. JOHNSON: 'He is young, my Lord (looking to his Lordship with an arch smile); all boys love liberty, till experience convinces them they are not so fit to govern themselves as they imagined. We are all agreed as to our own liberty: we would have as much of it as we can get; but

'The result is, that order is better than confusion.' JOHNSON: 'The result is, that order cannot be had but by subordination.'

On Friday, April 16, I had been present at the trial of the unfortunate Mr. Hackman, who, in a fit of frantic jealous love, had shot Miss Ray, the favourite of a nobleman. Johnson, in whose company I had dined to-day with some other friends, was much interested by my account of what passed, and particularly with his prayer for the mercy of heaven. He said, in a solemn fervid tone, 'I hope he shall find mercy.'

This day a violent altercation arose between Johnson and Beauclerk [at the club], which having made much noise at the time, I think it proper, in order to prevent any future misrepresentation, to give a minute account of it.

In talking of Hackman, Johnson argued, as Judge Blackstone had done, that his being furnished with two pistols was a proof that he meant to shoot two persons. Mr. Beauclerk said, 'No; for that every wise man who intended to shoot himself took two pistols, that he might be sure of doing it at once. Lord 's cook shot himself with one pistol, and lived ten days in great agony. Mr., who loved buttered muffins, but durst not eat them because they disagreed with his stomach, resolved to shoot himself; and then he eat three buttered muffins for breakfast, before shooting himself, knowing that he should not be troubled with indigestion: he had two charged pistols; one was found lying charged upon the table by him, after he had shot himself with the other.'-'Well,' said Johnson, with an air of triumph, 'you see here one pistol was sufficient.' Beauclerk replied smartly, 'Because it happened to kill him.' And either then or very little afterwards, being piqued at Johnson's triumphant remark, added, 'This is what you don't know, and I do.' There was then a cessation of the dispute; and some minutes intervened, during which dinner and the glass went on cheerfully; when Johnson suddenly and abruptly exclaimed, 'Mr. Beauclerk, how came you to talk so petulantly to me, as, "This is what you don't know, but what I know?" One thing I know, which you don't seem to know, that you are very uncivil.' BEAUCLERK: 'Because you began by being uncivil (which you always are).' The words in parentheses were, I believe, not heard by Dr. Johnson. Here again there was a cessation of arms. Johnson told me that the reason why he waited at first some time without taking any notice of what Mr. Beauclerk said, was because he was think

for in proportion as we take, others must loose. I believe we hardly wish that the mob should have liberty to govern us. When that was the case some time ago, no man was at liberty not to have candles in his windows.' RAMSAY:

considered that there were present a young Lord and an eminent traveller, two men of the world with whom he had never dined before, he was apprehensive that they might think they had a right to take such liberties with him a Beauclerk did, and therefore resolved he would not let it pass; adding, 'that he would not appear a coward.' A little while after this, the conversation turned on the violence of Hack man's temper. Johnson then said, 'It was his business to command his temper, as my friend Mr. Beauclerk should have done some time ago.' BEAUCLERK: 'I should learn of you, sir.' JOHNSON: 'Sir, you have given me opportunities enough of learning, when I have been in your company. No man loves to be treated with contempt.' BEAUCLERK (with a polite inclination toward Johnson): 'Sir, you have known me twenty years, and however I may have treated others, you may be sure I could never treat you with contempt.' JOHNSON: 'Sir, you have said more than was necessary.' Thus it ended; and Beauclerk's coach not having come for him till very late, Dr. Johnson and another gentleman sat with him a long time after the rest of the company were gone; and he and I dined at Beauclerk's on the Saturday se'nnight following. After this tempest had subsided, I recollect the following particulars of his conversation :'I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning, for that is a sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention; because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards.'

'Mallet, I believe, never wrote a single line of his projected Life of the Duke of Marlborough. He groped for materials, and thought of it till he had exhausted his mind. Thus it sometimes happens that men entangle themselves in their own schemes.'

'To be contradicted in order to force you to talk is mighty unpleasing. You shine, indeed; but it is by being ground.'

Of a gentleman who made some figure among the Literati of his time (Mr. Fitzherbert), he said, 'What eminence he had was by a felicity of manner; he had no more learning than what he could not help.'

On Saturday, April 24, I dined with him at Mr. Beauclerk's, with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Jones (afterwards Sir William), Mr. Langton, Mr. Steevens, Mr. Paradise, and Dr. Higgins. I mentioned that Mr. Wilkes had attacked Garrick to me as a man who had no friend. JOHNSON: 'I believe he is right, sir. [Οἱ φίλοι, οὐ φίλος]-He had friends, but no friend. Garrick was so diffused, he had no man to whom he wished to unbosom himself. He found people always ready to applaud him, and that always for the same thing; so he saw life with great uniformity. I took upon me, for once, to fight with Goliath's weapons, and play the sophist.'Garrick did not need a friend, as he got from everybody all that he wanted. What is a friend? One who supports you and comforts you, while others do not. Friendship, you

know, sir, is the cordial drop, "to make the nauseous draught of life go down;" but if the draught be not nauseous, if it be all sweet, there is no occasion for that drop.' JOHNSON: 'Many men would not be content to live so. I hope I should not. They would wish to have an intimate friend, with whom they might compare minds and cherish private virtues.' One of the company mentioned Lord Chesterfield as a man who had no friend. JOHNSON: 'There were more materials to make friendship in Garrick, had he not been so diffused.' BoSWELL: 'Garrick was pure gold, but beat out to thin leaf. Lord Chesterfield was tinsel. JOHNSON: 'Garrick was a very good man, the most cheerful man of his age; a decent liver in a profession which is supposed to give indulgence to licentiousness; and a man who gave away, freely, money acquired by himself. He began the world with a great hunger for money; the son of a half-pay officer, bred in a family whose study was to make fourpence do as much as others made fourpence halfpenny do. But when he had got money he was very liberal.' I presumed to animadvert on his eulogy on Garrick in his Lives of the Poets. 'You say, sir, his death eclipsed the gaiety of nations.' JOHNSON: 'I could not have said more or less. It is the truth; eclipsed, not extinguished; and his death did eclipse: it was like a storm.' BosWELL: 'But why nations? Did his gaiety extend further than his own nation?' JOHNSON: 'Why, sir, some exaggeration must be allowed. Besides, nations may be said-if we allow the Scotch to be a nation-to have gaiety-which they have not. You are an exception, though. Come, gentlemen, let us candidly admit that there is one Scotchman who is cheerful.' BEAUCLERK: 'But he is a very unnatural Scotchman.' I, however, continued to think the compliment to Garrick hyperbolically untrue, His acting had ceased some time before his death; at any rate he had acted in Ireland but a short time, at an early period of his life, and never in Scotland. I objected also to what appears an anti-climax of praise, when con. trasted with the preceding panegyric, 'and diminished the public stock of harmless pleasure!' 'Is not harmless pleasure very tame?' JOHNSON: 'Nay, sir, harmless pleasure is the highest praise. Pleasure is a word of dubious import; pleasure is, in general, dangerous, and pernicious to virtue. To be able, therefore, to furnish pleasure that is harmless, pleasure pure and unalloyed, is as great a power as man can possess.' This was, perhaps, as ingenious a defence as could be made; still, however, I was not satisfied.

A celebrated wit being mentioned, he said, 'One may say of him as was said of a French wit, Il n'a de l'esprit que contre Dieu. I have been several times in company with him, but never perceived any strong power of wit. He produces a general effect by various means; he has a cheerful countenance and a gay voice. Besides, his trade is wit. It would be as wild in him to come into company without merriment, as for a highwayman to take the road without his pistols.'

Talking of the effects of drinking, he said, 'Drinking may be practised with great prudence; a man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk; a sober man, who happens occasionally to get drunk, readily enough goes into a new company, which a man who has been drinking should never do. Such a man will undertake anything; he is without skill in inebriation.

I

used to slink home when I had drunk too much. A man accustomed to self-examination will be conscious when he is drunk, though an habitual drunkard will not be conscious of it. I knew a physician who for twenty years was not sober; yet in a pamphlet, which he wrote upon fevers, he appealed to Garrick and me for his vindication from a charge of drunkenness. A bookseller (naming him2), who got a large fortune by trade, was so habitually and equally drunk, that his most intimate friends never perceived that he was more sober at one time than another.'

Talking of celebrated and successful irregular practisers in physic, he said, 'Taylor was the most ignorant man I ever knew, but sprightly; Ward the dullest. Taylor challenged me once to talk Latin with him (laughing). I quoted some of Horace, which he took to be part of my own speech. He said a few words well enough.' BEAUCLERK: 'I remember, sir, you said that Taylor was an instance how far impudence could carry ignorance.' Mr. Beauclerk was very entertaining this day, and told us a number of short stories in a lively and elegant manner, and with that air of the world which has I know not what impressive effect, as if there were something more than is expressed, or than, perhaps, we could perfectly understand. As Johnson and I accompanied Sir Joshua Reynolds in his coach, Johnson said, 'There is in Beauclerk a predominance over his company that one does not like. But he is a man who has lived so much in the world, that he has a short story on every occasion; he is always ready to talk, and is never exhausted.'

Johnson and I passed the evening at Miss Reynolds's, Sir Joshua's sister. I mentioned that an eminent friend of ours, talking of the common remark that affection descends, said that this was wisely contrived for the preservation of mankind; for which it was not so necessary that there should be affection from children to parents, as from parents to child

Dr. James.

• Andrew Miller.

• Probably Burke.

ren; nay, there would be no harm in that view though children should at a certain age eat their parents.' JOHNSON: 'But, sir, if this were known generally to be the case, parents would not have affection for children.' BOSWELL: 'True, sir; for it is in expectation of a return that parents are so attentive to their children; and I know a very pretty instance of a little girl of whom her father was very fond, who once, when he was in a melancholy fit, and had gone to bed, persuaded him to rise in good humour by saying, "My dear papa, please to get up, and let me help you on with your clothes, that I may learn to do it when you are an old man.""

Soon after this time a little incident occurred which I will not suppress, because I am desirous that my work should be, as much as is consistent with the strictest truth, an antidote to the false and injurious notions of his character which have been given by others, and therefore I infuse every drop of genuine sweetness into my biographical cup.

'TO DR. JOHNSON.

'SOUTH AUDLEY STREET, Monday, April 26.

'MY DEAR SIR, -I am in great pain with an inflamed foot, and obliged to keep my bed, so am prevented from having the pleasure to dine at Mr. Ramsay's to-day, which is very hard; and my spirits are sadly sunk. Will you be so friendly as to come and sit an hour with me in the evening. -I am, ever your most faithful and affectionate humble servant,

'JAMES BOSWELL.'

'TO MR. BOSWELL.

'HARLEY STREET.

'Mr. Johnson laments the absence of Mr. Boswell, and will come to him.'

He came to me in the evening, and brought Sir Joshua Reynolds. I need scarcely say that their conversation, while they sat by my bedside, was the most pleasing opiate to pain that could have been administered.

Johnson, being now better disposed to obtain information concerning Pope than he was last year, sent by me to my Lord Marchmont a present of those volumes of his Lives of the Poets, which were at this time published, with a request to have permission to wait on him; and his Lordship, who had called on him twice, obligingly appointed Saturday, the 1st of May, for receiving us.

On that morning, Johnson came to me from Streatham, and, after drinking chocolate at General Paoli's, in South Audley Street, we proceeded to Lord Marchmont's, in Curzon Street. His Lordship met us at the door of his library, and with great politeness said to Johnson, 'I am not going to make an encomium upon myself, by telling you the high respect I have