extraordinary." He said, he believed Burke was intended for the law; but either had not money enough to follow it, or had not diligence enough. He said, he could not understand how a man could apply to one thing, and not to another. Robertson said, one man had more judgment, another more imagination. JOHNSON. "No, Sir; it is only, one man has more mind than another. He may direct it differently; he may, by accident, see the success of one kind of study, and take a desire to excel in it. I am persuaded that had Sir Isaac Newton applied to poetry, he would have made a very fine epic poem. I could as easily apply to law as to tragic poetry." (1) BOSWELL. "Yet, Sir, you did apply to tragic poetry, not to law." JOHNSON. Because, Sir, I had not money to study law. Sir, the man who has vigour may walk to the east, just as well as to the west, if he happens to turn his head that way." Boswell. 'But, Sir, 't is like walkone man may naturally do A hare will run up being short; a dog

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ing up and down a hill; the one better than the other. a hill best, from her fore-legs down." JOHNSON. "Nay, Sir; that is from mechanical powers. If you make mind mechanical, you may argue in that manner. One mind is a vice, and holds fast; there's a good memory. Another is a file; and he is a disputant, à controversialist. Another is a razor; and he is sarcastical." We talked of Whitfield. He said he was at the same college with him, and knew him before he began

(1) How much a man deceives himself! Johnson, who has shown such powers in other lines of literature, failed as a tragic poet.-C.

to be better than other people (smiling); that he believed he sincerely meant well, but had a mixture of politics and ostentation: whereas Wesley thought of religion only. (1) Robertson said, Whitfield had strong natural eloquence, which, if cultivated, would have done great things. JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, I take it he was at the height of what his abilities could do, and was sensible of it. He had the ordinary advantages of education; but he chose to pursue that oratory which is for the mob.” BOSWELL. "He had great effect on the passions." JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, I don't think so. He could not represent a succession of pathetic images. He vociferated, and made an impression. There, again, was a mind like a hammer." Dr. Johnson now said, a certain eminent political friend (2) of ours was wrong in his maxim of sticking to a certain set of men on all occasions. "I can see that a man may do right to stick to a party," said he, “that is to say, he is a Whig, or he is a Tory, and he thinks one of those parties upon the whole the best, and that to make it prevail, it must be generally supported, though, in particulars, it may

(1) That cannot be said now, after the flagrant part which Mr. John Wesley took against our American brethren, when, in his own name, he threw amongst his enthusiastic flock the very individual combustibles of Dr. Johnson's "Taxation no Tyranny;" and after the intolerant spirit which he manifested against our fellow Christians of the Roman Catholic communion, for which that able champion, Father O'Leary, has given him so hearty a drubbing. But I should think myself very unworthy, if I did not at the same time acknowledge Mr. John Wesley's merit, as a veteran "Soldier of Jesus Christ," who has, I do believe, turned many from darkness into light, and from the power of Satan to the living God.

(2) Mr. Burke. See antè, Vol. III. p. 263. . C.

be wrong. He takes its faggot of principles, in which there are fewer rotten sticks than in the other, though some rotten sticks, to be sure; and they cannot well be separated. But, to bind one's self to one man, or one set of men (who may be right to-day, and wrong to-morrow), without any general preference of system, I must disapprove."(1)

He told us of Cooke (2), who translated Hesiod, and lived twenty years on a translation of Plautus,

(1) If due attention were paid to this observation, there would be more virtue even in politics. What Dr. Johnson justly condemned has, I am sorry to say, greatly increased in the present reign. At the distance of four years from this conversation, 21st of February, 1777, my Lord Archbishop of York, in his "Sermon before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," thus indignantly describes the then state of parties:"Parties once had a principle belonging to them,absurd, perhaps, and indefensible, but still carrying a notion of duty, by which honest minds might easily be caught. But they are now combinations of individuals, who, instead of being the sons and servants of the community, make a league for advancing their private interests. It is their business to hold high the notion of political honour. I believe and trust, it is not injurious to say, that such a bond is no better than that by which the lowest and wickedest combinations are held together; and that it denotes the last stage of political depravity.

To find a thought, which just showed itself to us from the mind of Johnson, thus appearing again at such a distance of time, and without any communication between them, enlarged to full growth in the mind of Markham, is a curious object of philosophical contemplation. That two such great and luminous minds should have been so dark in one corner; that they should have held it to be "wicked rebellion" in the British subjects established in America, to resist the abject condition of holding all their property at the mercy of British subjects remaining at home, while their allegiance to our common lord the king was to be preserved inviolate, is a striking proof, to me, either that "he who sitteth in heaven" scorns the loftiness of human pride, or that the evil spirit, whose personal existence I strongly believe, and even in this age am confirmed in that belief by a Fell, nay, by a Hurd, has more power than some choose to allow.

(2) [Thomas Cooke was born in 1702, and died 1756.]

for which he was always taking subscriptions; and that he presented Foote to a club in the following singular manner : "This is the nephew of the gentleman who was lately hung in chains for murdering his brother." (1)

In the evening I introduced to Mr. Johnson (2) two good friends of mine, Mr. William Nairne, advocate, and Mr. Hamilton of Sundrum, my neighbour in the country, both of whom supped with us. I have preserved nothing of what passed, except that Dr. Johnson displayed another of his heterodox opinions — a contempt of tragic acting. He said, "The action of all players in tragedy is bad. It should be a man's study to repress those signs of emotion and passion, as they are called." He was of a directly contrary opinion to that of Fielding, in his "Tom Jones;' who makes Partridge say of Garrick, "Why, I could act as well as he myself.

(1) Mr. Foote's mother was the sister of Sir J. Dinely Goodere, Bart., and of Captain Goodere, who_commanded H. M. S. Ruby, on board which, when lying in King's Road, Bristol, in January, 1741, the latter caused his brother to be forcibly carried, and there barbarously murdered. Captain Goodere was, with two of his accomplices, executed for this offence in the April following. The circumstances of the case, and some other facts connected with this family, led to an opinion that Captain Goodere was insane; and some unhappy circumstances in Foote's life render it probable that he had not wholly escaped this hereditary irregularity of mind. — C. Foote's first publication was a pamphlet in defence of his uncle's memory. WALTER SCOTT.

(2) It may be observed, that I sometimes call my great friend Mr. Johnson, sometimes Dr. Johnson; though he had at this time a Doctor's degree from Trinity College, Dublin. The University of Oxford afterwards conferred it upon him by a diploma, in very honourable terms. It was some time before I could bring myself to call him Doctor; but, as he has been long known by that title, I shall give it to him in the rest of this Journal. B. Johnson never, it seems, called himself Doctor. See antè, Vol. I. p. 289., and post, April 7. 1775. — C.

I am sure, if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did." For, when I asked him, "Would not you, Sir, start as Mr. Garrick does, if you saw a ghost?" he answered, "I hope not. If I did, I should frighten the ghost."

NOTE- -on Dr. Johnson's assertion that Mr. Burke "never made

This was one of the points upon which Dr. Johnson was strangely heterodox. For surely Mr. Burke, with his other remarkable qualities, is also distinguished for his wit, and for wit of all kinds too; not merely that power of language which Pope chooses to denominate wit: —

"True wit is Nature to advantage dress'd;

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;"

but surprising allusions, brilliant sallies of vivacity, and pleasant conceits. His speeches in parliament are strewed with them. Take, for instance, the variety which he has given in his wide range, yet exact detail, when exhibiting his Reform Bill. And his conversation abounds in wit. Let me put down a specimen. I told him I had seen, at a blue-stocking assembly, a number of ladies sitting round a worthy and tall friend of ours [Mr. Langton], listening to his literature. "Ay," said he, like maids round a May-pole." I told him, I had found out a perfect definition of human nature, as distinguished from the animal. An ancient philosopher said, man was "a two-legged animal without feathers;" upon which his rival sage had a cock plucked bare, and set him down in the school before all the disciples, as a "philosophic man." Dr. Franklin said, man was "a toolmaking animal," which is very well; for no animal but man makes a thing, by means of which he can make another thing. But this applies to very few of the species. My definition of man is, "a cooking animal." The beasts have memory, judgment, and all the faculties and passions of our mind, in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook. The trick of the monkey using the cat's paw to roast a chestnut is only a piece of shrewd malice in that turpissima bestia, which humbles us so sadly by its similarity to us. Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man whatever is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he himself "Your definition is good," said Mr. Burke, "and I now see the full force of the common proverb, There is reason in roasting of eggs.' When Mr. Wilkes, in his days of tumultu

eats.