from very respectable divines. He showed me one with notes on the margin in Johnson's hand-writing; and I was present when he read another to Johnson, that he might have his opinion of it, and Johnson said it was "very well." These, we may be sure, were not Johnson's; for he was above little arts, or tricks of deception.

Johnson was by no means of opinion that every man of a learned profession should consider it as incumbent upon him, or as necessary to his credit, to appear as an authour. When, in the ardour of ambition for literary fame, I regretted to him one day that an eminent judge1 had nothing of it, and therefore would leave no perpetual monument of himself to posterity; "Alas! sir," said Johnson, "what a mass of confusion should we have, if every bishop, and every judge, every lawyer, physician, and divine, were to write books!"

I mentioned to Johnson a respectable person of a very strong mind, who had little of that tenderness which is common to human nature; as an instance of which, when I suggested to him that he should invite his son, who had been settled ten years in foreign parts, to come home and pay him a visit, his answer was, No, no, let him mind his business." JOHNSON. "I do not agree with him, sir, in this. Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life."

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In the evening, Johnson, being in very good spirits, entertained us with several characteristical portraits; I regret that any of them escaped my retention and diligence. I found from experience, that to collect

[Probably Lord Mansfield.-ED.]

[He means his father, old Lord Auchinleck; and the absent son was David, who spent so many years in Spain.—ED.]

VOL. IV.

D

Piozzi,

p. 133.

my friend's conversation so as to exhibit it with any degree of its original flavour, it was necessary to write it down without delay. To record his sayings, after some distance of time, was like preserving or pickling long-kept and faded fruits, or other vegetables, which, when in that state, have little or nothing of their taste when fresh.

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I shall present my readers with a series of what I gathered this evening from the Johnsonian garden. My friend, the late Earl of Corke, had a great desire to maintain the literary character of his family: he was a genteel man, but did not keep up the dignity of his rank. He was so generally civil, that nobody thanked him for it."

"Did we not hear so much said of Jack Wilkes, we should think more highly of his conversation. Jack has a great variety of talk, Jack is a scholar, and Jack has the manners of a gentleman. But after hearing his name sounded from pole to pole, as the phoenix of convivial felicity, we are disappointed in his company. He has always been at me: but I would do Jack a kindness, rather than not1. The contest is now over."

"Garrick's gaiety of conversation has delicacy and elegance; Foote makes you laugh more; but Foote has the air of a buffoon paid for entertaining the 13 company. He, indeed, well deserves his hire." ["Foote's happiness of manner in relating was such," Johnson said, “as subdued arrogance and roused stupidity: his stories were truly like those of Biron, in Love's Labour Lost, so very attractive

'That aged ears play'd truant with his tales,
And younger hearings were quite ravished,
So sweet and voluble was his discourse.""

[See post, 21st May, 1783.-ED.]

134.

"Of all conversers, however," added he," the late Piozzi, Hawkins Browne was the most delightful with whom 42 I ever was in company; his talk was at once so elegant, so apparently artless, so pure, and so pleasing, it seemed a perpetual stream of sentiment, enlivened by gaiety, and sparkling with images." Mrs. Piozzi used to think Mr. Johnson's determined preference of a cold, monotonous talker over an emphatical and violent one, would make him quite a favourite among the men of ton, whose insensibility, or affectation of perpetual calmness, certainly did not give to him the offence it does to many. He loved "conversation without effort," he said; and the encomiums which he so often pronounced on the manners of Topham Beauclerc in society constantly ended in that peculiar praise, that "it was without effort."] Colley Cibber once consulted me as to one of his birthday odes, a long time before it was wanted. I objected very freely to several passages. Cibber lost patience, and would not read his ode to an end. When we had done with criticism we walked over to Richardson's, the authour of Clarissa,' and I wondered to find Richardson displeased that I did not treat Cibber with more respect. Now, sir, to talk of respect for a player'!" (smiling disdainfully.) BosWELL. There, sir, you are always heretical: you never will allow merit to a player." JOHNSON. "Merit, sir! what merit? Do you respect a ropedancer or a ballad-singer?" BOSWELL." No, sir; but we respect a great player, as a man who can conceive lofty sentiments, and can express them

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1 [Perhaps Richardson's displeasure was created by Johnson's paying no respect to the age of Cibber, who was almost old enough to have been his grandfather. Cibber had left the stage, and ceased to be a player before Johnson left Oxford; so that he had no more reason to despise Cibber for that profession, than Cibber would have had if he had recalled to him the days when he was usher at a school.—ED.]

gracefully." JOHNSON. "What, sir, a fellow who claps a hump on his back, and a lump on his leg, and cries, I am Richard the Third?' Nay, sir, a ballad-singer is a higher man, for he does two things; he repeats and he sings: there is both recitation and musick in his performance; the player only recites." BOSWELL. "My dear sir! you may turn any thing into ridicule. I allow, that a player of farce is not entitled to respect; he does a little thing: but he who can represent exalted characters, and touch the noblest passions, has very respectable powers; and mankind have agreed in admiring great talents for the stage. We must consider, too, that a great player does what very few are capable to do; his art is a very rare faculty. Who can repeat Hamlet's soliloquy, To be, or not to be,' as Garrick does it?" JOHNSON. Any body may. Jemmy, there (a boy about eight years old, who was in the room), will do it as well in a week." BOSWELL. "No, no, sir: and as a proof of the merit of great acting, and of the value which mankind set upon it, Garrick has got a hundred thousand pounds." JOHNSON. "Is getting a hundred thousand pounds a proof of excellence? That has been done by a scoundrel commissary.”

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This was most fallacious reasoning. I was sure, for once, that I had the best side of the argument. I boldly maintained the just distinction between a tragedian and a mere theatrical droll; between those who rouse our terrour and pity, and those who only make us laugh. "If," said I," Betterton and Foote were to walk into this room, you would respect Betterton much more than Foote." JOHNSON. "If Betterton were to walk into this room with Foote, Foote would soon drive him out of it. Foote, sir, quatenùs Foote, has powers superiour to them all." [The fact was, that Johnson could not see the pas

sions as they rose and chased one another in the Murph. p. 145. varied features of the expressive face of Garrick. Mr. Murphy remembered being in conversation with Johnson near the side of the scenes, during the tragedy of King Lear: when Garrick came off the stage, he said, "You two talk so loud, you destroy all my feelings." "Prithee," replied Johnson, “ do not talk of feelings; Punch has no feelings."]

On Monday, September 22, when at breakfast, I unguardedly said to Dr. Johnson, "I wish I saw you and Mrs. Macaulay together." He grew very angry; and, after a pause, while a cloud gathered on his brow, he burst out, "No, sir; you would not see us quarrel, to make you sport. Don't you know that it is very uncivil to pit two people against one another?" Then, checking himself, and wishing to be more gentle, he added, "I do not say you should be hanged or drowned for this; but it is very uncivil." Dr. Taylor thought him in the wrong, and spoke to him privately of it; but I afterwards acknowledged to Johnson that I was to blame, for I candidly owned, that I meant to express a desire to see a contest between Mrs. Macaulay and him; but then I knew how the contest would end; so that I was to see him triumph. JOHNSON. "Sir, you cannot be sure how a contest will end; and no man has a right to engage two people in a dispute by which their passions may be inflamed, and they may part with bitter resentment against each other. I would sooner keep company with a man from whom I must guard my pockets, than with a man who contrives to bring me into a dispute with somebody that he may hear it. This is the great fault of (naming one of

[Mr. Langton is, no doubt, meant here, and in the next paragraph. See the affair of the 7th May, 1773 (vol. ii. p. 239 and 323); where the reader will find the cause of Johnson's frequent and fretful recurrence to this complaint.ED.]