whom and his lordship a commerce of reciprocal compliments had long been carried on. In this war the smallest powers in alliance with him were of course led to engage, at least on the defensive, and thus I for one was excluded from the enjoyment of "A Feast for Reason," such as Mr. Cumberland has described, with a keen yet just and delicate pen, in his Observer. These minute inconveniences gave not the least disturbance to Johnson. He nobly said, when I talked to him of the feeble though shrill outcry which had been raised, "Sir, I considered myself as entrusted with a certain portion of truth. I have given my opinion sincerely; let them show where they think me wrong."

[MISCELLANEA]

After his return to London from this excursion, I saw him frequently, but have few memorandums; I shall therefore here insert some particulars which I have collected at various times.

It having been mentioned to Dr. Johnson that a gentleman who had a son whom he imagined to have an extreme degree of timidity, resolved to send him to a public school, that he might acquire confidence, - "Sir," said Johnson, "this is a preposterous expedient for removing his infirmity; such a disposition should be cultivated in the shade. Placing him at a public school is forcing an owl upon day."

A dull country magistrate gave Johnson a long tedious account of his exercising his criminal jurisdiction, the result of which was his having sentenced four convicts to transportation. Johnson, in an agony of impatience to get rid of such a companion, exclaimed, "I heartily wish, sir, that I were a fifth." Johnson was present when a tragedy was read in which there occurred this line:

Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free.

The company having admired it much, - "I cannot agree with you," said Johnson; "it might as well be said,

Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat."

Johnson having argued for some time with a pertinacious gentleman, his opponent, who had talked in a very puzzling manner, happened to say, "I don't understand you, sir";

upon which Johnson observed, "Sir, I have found you an argument, but I am not obliged to find you an understanding." He disapproved of Lord Hailes for having modernized the language of the ever memorable John Hales of Eton, in an edition which his lordship published of that writer's works. "An author's language, sir," said he, "is a characteristical part of his composition, and is also characteristical of the age in which he writes. Besides, sir, when the language is changed we are not sure that the sense is the same. No, sir; I am sorry Lord Hailes has done this."

Here it may be observed that his frequent use of the expression No, sir, was not always to intimate contradiction; for he would say so when he was about to enforce an affirmative proposition which had not been denied, as in the instance last mentioned. I used to consider it as a kind of flag of defiance, as if he had said, "Any argument you may offer against this is not just. No, sir, it is not." It was like Falstaff's "I deny your major."

Sir Joshua Reynolds having said that he took the altitude of a man's taste by his stories and his wit, and of his understanding by the remarks that he repeated, being always sure that he must be a weak man who quotes common things with an emphasis as if they were oracles, Johnson agreed with him; and Sir Joshua having also observed that the real character of a man was found out by his amusements, Johnson added, "Yes, sir; no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures."

I have mentioned Johnson's general aversion to pun. He once, however, endured one of mine. When we were talking of a numerous company in which he had distinguished himself highly, I said, "Sir, you were a cod surrounded by smelts. Is not this enough for you? at a time too when you were not fishing for a compliment?" He laughed at this with a complacent approbation. Old Mr. Sheridan observed, upon my mentioning it to him, "He liked your compliment so well, he was willing to take it with pun sauce." For my own part, I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed, and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation. . .

When I pointed out to him in the newspaper one of Mr. Grattan's animated and glowing speeches, in favor of the freedom of Ireland, in which this expression occurred (I know not if accu

rately taken): "We will persevere till there is not one link of the English chain left to clank upon the rags of the meanest beggar in Ireland, "—"Nay, sir," said Johnson, "don't you perceive that one link cannot clank?”. . .

It may be worth remarking, among the minutia of my collection, that Johnson was once drawn to serve in the militia, the Trained Bands of the city of London, and that Mr. Rackstrow, of the Museum in Fleet Street, was his colonel. It may be believed he did not serve in person; but the idea, with all its circumstances, is certainly laughable. He upon that occasion provided himself with a musket, and with a sword and belt, which I have seen hanging in his closet.

He was very constant to those whom he once employed, if they gave him no reason to be displeased. When somebody talked of being imposed on in the purchase of tea and sugar, and such articles, "That will not be the case," said he, "if you go to a stately shop, as I always do. In such a shop it is not worth their while to take a petty advantage."

An author of most anxious and restless vanity being mentioned, "Sir," said he, "there is not a young sapling upon Parnassus more severely blown about by every wind of criticism than that poor fellow."

The difference, he observed, between a well-bred and an illbred man is this: "One immediately attracts your liking, the other your aversion. You love the one till you find reason to hate him; you hate the other till you find reason to love him."

The wife of one of his acquaintance had fraudulently made a purse for herself out of her husband's fortune. Feeling a proper compunction in her last moments, she confessed how much she had secreted; but before she could tell where it was placed, she was seized with a convulsive fit and expired. Her husband said he was more hurt by her want of confidence in him than by the loss of his money. "I told him," said Johnson, "that he should console himself; for perhaps the money might be found, and he was sure that his wife was gone."

A foppish physician once reminded Johnson of his having been in company with him on a former occasion. "I do not remember it, sir." The physician still insisted, adding that he that day wore so fine a coat that it must have attracted his notice.

"Sir," said Johnson, "had you been dipped in Pactolus, I should not have noticed you."

He seemed to take a pleasure in speaking in his own style; for when he had carelessly missed it, he would repeat the thought translated into it. Talking of the comedy of The Rehearsal, he said, "It has not wit enough to keep it sweet." This was easy; he therefore caught himself, and pronounced a more round sentence: "It has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction."

He censured a writer of entertaining travels for assuming a feigned character, saying (in his sense of the word), "He carries out one lie; we know not how many he brings back." At another time, talking of the same person, he observed, “Sir, your assent to a man whom you have never known to falsify, is a debt; but after you have known a man to falsify, your assent to him then is a favor."

When I observed to him that painting was so far inferior to poetry, that the story or even emblem which it communicates must be previously known; and mentioned, as a laughable instance of this, that a little miss, on seeing a picture of Justice with the scales, had exclaimed to me, "See, there's a woman selling sweetmeats," he said, "Painting, sir, can illustrate, but cannot inform."

No man was more ready to make an apology, when he had censured unjustly, than Johnson. When a proof-sheet of one of his works was brought to him, he found fault with the mode in which a part of it was arranged, refused to read it, and in a passion desired that the compositor might be sent to him. The compositor was Mr. Manning, a decent, sensible man, who had composed about one half of his Dictionary, when in Mr. Strahan's printing-house, and a great part of his Lives of the Poets, when in that of Mr. Nichols, and who (in his seventyseventh year), when in Mr. Baldwin's printing-house, composed a part of the first edition of this work concerning him. By producing the manuscript he at once satisfied Dr. Johnson that he was not to blame. Upon which Johnson candidly and earnestly said to him, "Mr. Compositor, I ask your pardon; Mr. Compositor, I ask your pardon again and again."

His generous humanity to the miserable was almost beyond example. The following instance is well attested. Coming home

late one night, he found a poor woman lying in the street so much exhausted that she could not walk. He took her upon his back, and carried her to his house, when he discovered that she was one of those wretched females who had fallen into the lowest state of vice, poverty, and disease. Instead of harshly upbraiding her, he had her taken care of with all tenderness for a long time, at a considerable expense, till she was restored to health, and endeavored to put her into a virtuous way of living.

[CONCLUSION]

The character of Samuel Johnson has, I trust, been so developed in the course of this work, that they who have honored it with a perusal may be considered as well acquainted with him. As, however, it may be expected that I should collect into one view the capital and distinguishing features of this extraordinary man, I shall endeavor to acquit myself of that part of my biographical undertaking, however difficult it may be to do that which many of my readers will do better for themselves. His figure was large and well formed, and his countenance of the cast of an ancient statue; yet his appearance was rendered strange and somewhat uncouth by convulsive cramps, by the scars of that distemper which it was once imagined the royal touch could cure, and by a slovenly mode of dress. He had the use only of one eye; yet so much does mind govern and even supply the deficiency of organs, that his visual perceptions, as far as they extended, were uncommonly quick and accurate. So morbid was his temperament that he never knew the natural joy of a free and vigorous use of his limbs; when he walked, it was like the struggling gait of one in fetters; when he rode, he had no command or direction of his horse, but was carried as if in a balloon. That with his constitution and habits of life he should have lived seventy-five years is a proof that an inherent vivida vis is a powerful preservative of the human frame.

Man is, in general, made up of contradictory qualities; and these will ever show themselves in strange succession where a consistency, in appearance at least, if not reality, has not been attained by long habits of philosophical discipline. In proportion to the native vigor of the mind, the contradictory qualities will be the more prominent, and more difficult to be adjusted; and therefore we are not to wonder that Johnson exhibited an