228. The Old English Divines.

That Johnson owed his excellence as a writer to the divines and others of the last century, I can attest. Hooker he admired for his logical precision, Sanderson for his acuteness, and Taylor for his amazing erudition; Sir Thomas Browne for his penetration, and Cowley for the ease and unaffected structure of his periods. The tinsel of Sprat disgusted him, and he could but just endure the smooth verbosity of Tillotson. Hammond and Barrow he thought involved, and of the latter that he was unnecessarily prolix.

229. "Fiat experimentum in corpore vili.”

He was much pleased with the following repartee: "Fiat experimentum in corpore vili," said a French physician to his colleague, in speaking of the disorder of a poor man that understood Latin, and who was brought into an hospital; "Corpus non tam vile est,” says the patient, " pro quo Christus ipse non dedignatus est mori."

230. Hume.

He would never hear Hume mentioned with any temper. "A man," said he, "who endeavoured to Dersuade his friend, who had the stone, to shoot himelf!"

231. Madness.

He was a great enemy to the present fashionable way of supposing worthless and infamous persons mad.

232. A Scoundrel.

Dr. Johnson used to say a man was a scoundrel who was afraid of any thing.

He thought of Dr. Clarke, whose sermons he valued above all others, that he complied too frequently with invitations to dine with persons of high rank, his parishioners, and spent too much of his time in ceremonious visits: differing, in this respect, from his contemporary Smalridge, the elegant Favonius of the Tatler, who, in the height of his reputation as a preacher, was ever ready to visit a sick person in the most obscure alley of Westminster.

234. Biography.

When accused of mentioning ridiculous anecdotes in the "Lives of the Poets," he said, he should not have been an exact biographer if he had omitted them. "The business of such a one," said he, "is to give a complete account of the person whose life he is writing, and to discriminate him from all other persons, by any peculiarities of character or sentiments he may happen to have."

235. Round Numbers. "Round numbers," said he,

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are always false."

236. Friendships.

He once mentioned to me a saying of Dr. Nicholls, and highly commended it; namely, that it was a point of wisdom to form intimacies, and choose for our friends only persons of known worth and integrity; and that to do so had been the rule of his life.

237. Story Telling.

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Being once asked, if he ever embellished a story No," said he ; a story is to lead either to the knowledge of a fact or character, and is good for nothing it it he not strictly and literally true.'

238. Praise.

He said to me one day, "Garrick, I hear, complains that I am the only popular author of his time who has exhibited no praise of him in print; but he is mistaken, Akenside has forborne to mention him. Some, indeed, are lavish in their applause of all who come within the compass of their recollection; yet he who praises every body praises nobody; when both scales are equally loaded, neither can preponderate."

239. Matrimony.

He was extremely fond of the company and conversation of women, and had certainly very correct notions as to the basis on which matrimonial connections should be formed. He always advised his friends, when they were about to marry, to unite themselves to a woman of a pious and religious frame of mind. "Fear of the world, and a sense of honour," said he, may have an effect upon a man's conduct and behaviour: a woman without religion is without the only motive that in general can incite her to do well."

When some one asked him for what he should marry, he replied, “first, for virtue; secondly, for wit; thirdly, for beauty; and fourthly, for money."

240. Pope.

In his interview with Lord Marchmont, he told me, that his first question was, "What kind of a man was Mr. Pope in his conversation?" His lordship answered, "That if the conversation did not take something of an epigrammatic turn, he fell asleep, or perhaps pretended to be so."

241. Allegorical Painting.

Talking with some persons about allegorical painting, he said, "I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I

know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world."

242. A Lad of Parts.

He once told me, that being at the house of a friend, whose son in his school vacation was come home, the Cather spoke of this child as a lad of pregnant parts, and said that he was well versed in the classics, and acquainted with history, in the study whereof he took great delight. Having this information, Johnson, as a test of the young scholar's attainments, put this question to him: "At what time did the heathen oracles cease?" The boy, not in the least daunted, answered, "At the dissolution of religious houses."

243. War.

He laughed much at Lord Kaimes' opinion that war was a good thing occasionally, as so much valour and 'virtue were exhibited in it. "A fire," says Johnson, "might as well be thought a good thing; there is the bravery and address of the firemen in extinguishing it; there is much humanity exerted in saving the lives and properties of the poor sufferers; yet," says he, "after all this, who can say a fire is a good thing?

244. Preachers.

Johnson seemed to think it a duty to accept in good part the endeavours of all public instructors, however meanly qualified for the office, and ever to forbear exercising his critical talents on the effusions of men inferior in learning and abilities to himself. Probably he, on such occasions, recollected the quain distich of Herbert:

"The worst have something good; where all want sence, God takes the text, and preacheth patience."

Of music he said,

without vice."

245. Music.

"It is the only sensual pleasure

246. Tea.

Speaking one day of tea, he said, "What a delightful beverage must that be that pleases all palates at a time when they can take nothing else at breakfast!"

247. Richard Baxter.

Of Baxter he entertained a very high opinion, and often spoke of him to me as a man of great parts, profound learning, and exemplary piety. He said of the office for the communion, drawn up by him and produced at the Savoy conference, that it was one of the first compositions of the ritual kind he had ever seen. (1)

248. Voltaire's Charles XII.

"The Life of Charles the Twelfth," by Voltaire, he said was one of the finest pieces of history ever written.

249. Jeremy Taylor.

At times when he was most distressed, I recommended to him the perusal of Bishop Taylor's "Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying," and also his "Ductor Dubitantium." Of the former, though he placed the author at the head of all the divines that have succeeded the fathers, he said, that on the reading thereof, he had found little more than he had brought himself; and, at the mention of the latter, he seemed to shrink.

250. Shenstone.

To some lady who was praising Shenstone's poems very much, and who had an Italian greyhound lying

(1) It is printed at the end of the first volume of Dr. Calamy's Abridgment of Baxter's History of his Life and Times. -H