not very strange, that people should be neither afraid nor ashamed of bringing in God Almighty thus at every turn between themselves and their dinner?" When I asked what ground he had for such imaginations, he informed me, that "a young lady once told him in confidence, that she could never persuade herself to be dressed against the bell rung for dinner, till she had made a vow to Heaven, that she would never more be absent from the family meals." 109. Scruples of Conscience. The strangest applications in the world were certainly made from time to time towards Mr. Johnson; who by that means had an inexhaustible fund of anecdote, and could, if he pleased, tell the most astonishing stories of human folly and human weakness, that ever were confided to any man not a confessor by profession. One day when he was in a humour to record some of them, he told us the following tale: "A person," said he, "had for these last five weeks often called at my door, but would not leave his name, or other message; but that he wished to speak with me. At last we met, and he told me that he was oppressed by scruples of conscience. I blamed him gently for not applying, as the rules of our church direct, to his parish priest or other discreet clergyman; when, after some compliments on his part, he told me, that he was clerk to a very eminent trader, at whose warehouses much business consisted in packing goods in order to go abroad that he was often tempted to take paper and packthread enough for his own use, and that he had indeed done so so often, that he could recollect no time when he ever had bought any for himself. <But probably,' said I, 'your master was wholly indifferent with regard to such trivial emoluments; you had better ask for it at once, and so take your trifles with consent.' 'Oh, Sir!' replies the visitor, my master bid me have as much as I pleased, and was half angry when I talked to him about it.' Then pray, Sir,' said I, 6 tease me no more about such airy nothings;' and was going on to be very angry, when I recollected that the fellow might be mad perhaps : so I asked him when he left the counting-house of an evening?' 'At seven o'clock, Sir.' 'And when do you go to-bed, Sir ?' 'At twelve o'clock.' 'Then,' replied I, 'I have at least learned thus much by my new acquaintance; that five hours of the four-andtwenty unemployed are enough for a man to go mad in; so I would advise you, Sir, to study algebra, if you are not an adept already in it: your head would get less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbours about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow. It is perhaps needless to add, that this visitor came no more." 110. Luck with Pupils. He had not much luck with two boys that he used to tell of, to whom he had taught the classics, SO that," he said, "they were no incompetent or mean scholars: it was necessary, however, that something more familiar should be known, and he bid them read the History of England. After a few months had elapsed, he asked them "if they could recollect who first destroyed the monasteries in our island ?" One modestly replied, that he did not know; the other said, Jesus Christ. 111. "Burke in a Bag." An Irish trader at our house one day heard Dr. Johnson launch out into very great and greatly deserved praises of Mr. Edmund Burke: delighted to find his countryman stood so high in the opinion of a man he give me We were had been told so much of, "Sir," said he, leave to tell something of Mr. Burke now.' all silent, and the honest Hibernian began to relate how Mr. Burke went to see the collieries in a distant province; and "he would go down into the bowels of the earth in a bag, and he would examine every thing: he went in a bag, Sir, and ventured his health and his life for knowledge; but he took care of his clothes, that they should not be spoiled, for he went down in a bag.” "Well, Sir," says Mr. Johnson good-humouredly, "if our friend Mund should die in any of these hazardous exploits, you and I would write his life and panegyric together; and your chapter of it should be entitled thus: Burke in a Bag.' He had always a very great personal regard and particular affection for Mr. Edmund Burke, as well as an esteem difficult for me to repeat, though for him only easy to express. And when, at the end of the year 1774, the general election called us all different ways, and broke up the delightful society in which we had spent some time at Beaconsfield, Dr. Johnson shook the hospitable master of the house kindly by the hand, and said, Farewell, my dear Sir, and remember that I wish you all the success which ought to be wished you, which can possibly be wished you indeed—by an honest man." tr 112. Sorrows of Vanity. When I have told how many follies Dr. Johnson knew of others, I must not omit to mention with how much fidelity he would always have kept them concealed, could they of whom he knew the absurdities have been contented, in the common phrase, to keep their own counsel. But, returning home one day from dining at the chaplain's table, he told me, that Dr. Goldsmith had given a very comical and unnecessarily exact recital there, of his own feelings when his play was hissed; telling the company how he went indeed to the Literary Club at night, and chatted gaily among his friends, as if nothing had happened amiss; that to impress them still more forcibly with an idea of his magnanimity, he even sang his favourite song about an old woman tossed in a blanket seventeen times as high as the moon: "but all this while I was suffering horrid tortures," said he, "and verily believe that if I had put a bit into my mouth it would have strangled me on the spot, I was so excessively ill; but I made more noise than usual to cover all that, and so they never perceived my not eating, nor I believe at all imaged to themselves the anguish of my heart: but when all were gone except Johnson here, I burst out a crying, and even swore that I would never write again. "All which, Doctor," says Mr. Johnson, amazed at his odd frankness, "I thought had been a secret between you and me; and I am sure I would not have said any thing about it for the world." "Now see," repeated he, when he told the story, "what a figure a man makes who thus unaccountably chooses to be the frigid narrator of his own disgrace. Il volto sciolto, ed i pensieri stretti, was a proverb made on purpose for such mortals, to keep people, if possible, from being thus the heralds of their own shame: for what compassion can they gain by such silly narratives? No man should be expected to sympathise with the sorrows of vanity. If, then, you are mortified by any ill usage, whether real or supposed, keep at least the account of such mortifications to yourself, and forbear to proclaim how meanly you are thought on by others, unless you desire to be meanly thought of by all.” 113. Superfluous Ingenuity. - Nicknames The little history of another friend's superfluous ingenuity will contribute to introduce a similar remark He had a daughter of about fourteen years old, as I re member, fat and clumsy: and though the father adored, and desired others to adore her, yet being aware perhaps that she was not what the French call pétrie des graces, and thinking, I suppose, that the old maxim, of beginning to laugh at yourself first where you have any thing ridiculous about you, was a good one, he comically enough called his girl Trundle when he spoke of her; and many who bore neither of them any ill-will felt disposed to laugh at the happiness of the appellation. "See now," says Dr. Johnson, "what haste people are in to be hooted. Nobody ever thought of this fellow nor of his daughter, could he but have been quiet him. self, and forborne to call the eyes of the world on his dowdy and her deformity. But it teaches one to see a least, that if nobody else will nickname one's children the parents will e'en do it themselves." 66 All this held true in matters to Mr. Johnson of more serious consequence. When Sir Joshua Reynolds had painted his portrait looking into the slit of his pen, and holding it almost close to his eye, as was his general custom, he felt displeased, and told me, "he would not be known by posterity for his defects only, let Sir Joshua do his worst." I said, in reply, that Reynolds had no such difficulties about himself, and that he might observe the picture which hung up in the room where we were talking, represented Sir Joshua holding his ear in his hand to catch the sound. "He may paint himself as deaf if he chooses,” replied Johnson ; "but I will not be blinking Sam.” 115. Shakspeare. It is chiefly for the sake of evincing the regularity and steadiness of Mr. Johnson's mind that I have given these trifling memoirs, to show that his soul was not different from that of another person, but, as it was, greater; and to give those who did not know him a just |