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cause 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 thinking whether he should resent it. But when he 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 as 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 Hackman'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 towards 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." ["I would never," said he, on another occasion, Hawk. A poph. “desire a young man to neglect his business for the p. 204. purpose of pursuing his studies, because it is unreasonable; I would only desire him to read at those hours when he would otherwise be unemployed. I will not promise that he will be a Bentley; but if he be a lad of any parts, he will certainly make a sensible man."]

40, 41.

[Dr. Johnson had never, by his own account, been Piozzi, p. a close student, and used to advise young people never to be without a book in their pocket, to be read at by-times when they had nothing else to do." It has been by that means," said he one day to a boy at Mr. Thrale's," that all my knowledge has been gained, except what I have picked up by running about the world with my wits ready to observe, and my tongue ready to talk. A man is seldom in a humour to unlock his book-case, set his desk in order, and betake himself to serious study; but a retentive memory will do something, and a fellow shall have strange credit given him, if he can but recollect striking passages from different books, keep the authors separate in his head, and bring his stock of knowledge artfully into play: how else," added he, "do the gamesters manage when they play for more money than they are worth?" His Dictionary, however, could not, one would think, have been written by running up and down; but he really did not consider it as a great performance; and used to say, " That he might have done it easily in two years, had not his health received several shocks during the time."

When Mr. Thrale, in consequence of this declaration, teased him in the year 1769 to give a new

VOL. IV.

S

p. 41.

Piozzi, edition of it, because, said he, there are four or five gross faults: "Alas, sir!" replied Johnson," there are four or five hundred faults, instead of four or five; but you do not consider that it would take me up three whole months' labour, and when the time was expired the work would not be done." When the booksellers set him about it, however, some years after, he went cheerfully to the business, said he was well paid, and that they deserved to have it done carefully.]

"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 1), 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. Oi pidor, ov pilos-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

[See ante, vol. iii. p. 513.-ED.]

2 See p. 148 of this vol. and vol. i. p. 182.--BOSWELL.

upon me, for once, to fight with Goliath's weapons, and play the sophist.-" Garrick did not need a friend, as he got from every body all 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 cheerfulest 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 four-pence do as much as others made four-pence-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 nor 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, and to have gaietywhich they have not. You are an exception, though.

Hawk. Apoph. p. 215.

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 anticlimax of praise, when contrasted with the preceding panegyrick—" and diminished the publick 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'.

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[To Sir J. Hawkins he said, "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."]

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

[Most readers will agree with Mr. Boswell that this eulogium is not very happily expressed; yet it appears to have been satisfactory to Garrick's immediate friends, for it is inscribed on the cenotaph erected by Mrs. Garrick to his memory in Lichfield Cathedral. Harwood's History of Lichfield, p. 86.—ED.]

2 [It has been suggested to the editor that Mr. George Selwyn is here meant ; but he cannot trace any acquaintance between Selwyn and Johnson.-ED.]

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