Anec. p. 81. of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to Piozzi the corporeal health; and those who resist gaiety will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite; for the solicitations of sense are always at hand; and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief. Remember,' continued he,' that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in foul air.' It was on this principle that Johnson encouraged parents to carry their daughters early and much into company; for what harm can be done before so many witnesses? Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions; and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, 't is the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can just soothe, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared; he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain.' These notions Dr. Johnson carried so very far, that I have heard him say, 'If you would shut up any man with any woman, so as to make them derive their whole pleasure from each other, they would inevitably fall in love, as it is called, with each other; but at six months' end, if you would throw them both into public life, where they might change partners at pleasure, each would soon forget that fondness which mutual dependence and the paucity of general amusement alone had caused, and each would separately feel delighted by their release.' Piozzi "The vacuity of life had at some early period of p. 117. his life struck so forcibly on the mind of Dr. John p. 118. p. 208. son, that it became by repeated impression his favourite hypothesis, and the general tenor of his reasonings commonly ended there, wherever they might begin. Such things therefore as other philosophers often attribute to various and contradictory causes, appeared to him uniform enough; all was done to fill up the time, upon his principle. I used to tell him, that it was like the clown's answer in As You Like It, of 'Oh Lord, sir!' for that it suited every occasion. One man, for example, was profligate and wild, as we call it, followed the girls, or sat still at the gaming-table. Why, life must be filled up,' said Johnson, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.' Another was a hoarder: Why, a fellow must do something; and what so easy to a narrow mind as hoarding halfpence till they turn into sixpences?' 6 "Avarice was a vice against which, however, I never much heard Dr. Johnson declaim, till one represented it to him connected with cruelty, or some such disgraceful companion. Do not,' said he, 'discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it: whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment. Such a mind may be made a good one; but the natural spendthrift, who grasps his pleasures greedily and coarsely, and cares for nothing but immediate indulgence, is very little to be valued above a negro.' "He hated disguise, and nobody penetrated is to readily. I showed him a letter written to a common A nec. p. 208. friend, who was at some loss for the explanation of Piozzi it. Whoever wrote it,' says our doctor, could, if he chose it, make himself understood; but 'tis the letter of an embarrassed man, sir;' and so the event. proved it to be. "Mysteriousness in trifles offended him on every side: it commonly ended in guilt,' he said; for those who begin by concealment of innocent things will soon have something to hide which they dare not bring to light.' He therefore encouraged an openness of conduct, in women particularly, who,' he observed, were often led away, when children, by their delight and power of surprising.' "He recommended, on something like the same prin- p. 209. ciple, that when one person meant to serve another, he should not go about it slily, or, as we say, underhand, out of a false idea of delicacy, to surprise one's friend with an unexpected favour; which, ten to one,' says he, fails to oblige your acquaintance, who had some reasons against such a mode of obligation, which you might have known but for that superfluous cunning which you think an elegance. Oh! never be seduced by such silly pretences,' continued he; if a wench wants a good gown, do not give her a fine smelling-bottle, because that is more delicate: as I once knew a lady lend the key of her library to a poor scribbling dependent, as if she took the woman for an ostrich that could digest iron.' He said, indeed, that women were very difficult to be taught the proper manner of conferring pecuniary favours; that they always gave too much money or too little; for that they had an idea of delicacy accompanying their gifts, so that they generally rendered them either useless or ridiculous.' "I pitied a friend before him who had a whining p. 131 wife, that found every thing painful to her, and no Anec. p. 131. Piozzi thing pleasing- He does not know that she whimpers,' says Johnson; 'when a door has creaked for a fortnight together, you may observe, the master will scarcely give sixpence to get it oiled.' p. 211. p. 212. "Of another lady, more insipid than offensive, I once heard him say, 'She has some softness indeed, but so has a pillow.' And when one observed in reply, that her husband's fidelity and attachment were exemplary, notwithstanding this low account at which her perfections were rated-'Why, sir,' cries the Doctor, being married to those sleepy-souled women, is just like playing at cards for nothing; no passion is excited, and the time is filled up. I do not however envy a fellow one of those honeysuckle wives, for my part, as they are but creepers at best, and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about.' "Needlework had a strenuous approver in Dr. Johnson, who said, that one of the great felicities of female life was the general consent of the world, that they might amuse themselves with petty occupations, which contributed to the lengthening their lives, and preserving their minds in a state of sanity.' 'A man cannot hem a pocket-handkerchief,' said a lady of quality to him one day, and so he runs mad, and torments his family and friends.' The expression struck him exceedingly, and when one acquaintance grew troublesome, and another unhealthy, he used to quote Lady Frances's1 observation, That a man cannot hem a pocket-handkerchief.' 66 Nice people found no mercy from Dr. Johnson; such I mean as can dine only at four o'clock, who cannot bear to be waked at an unusual hour, or 1 [Lady Frances Burgoyne, daughter of the last Lord Halifax. ED.] Anec. miss a stated meal without inconvenience. He had Piozzi no such prejudices himself, and with difficulty forgave them in another. Delicacy does not surely consist,' says he, in impossibility to be pleased; and that is false dignity indeed which is content to depend upon others." "That poverty was an evil to be avoided by all p. 196. honest means, however, no man was more ready to avow: concealed poverty particularly, which he said was the general corrosive that destroyed the peace of almost every family; to which no evening perhaps ever returned without some new project for hiding the sorrows and dangers of the next day. Want of money,' says Dr. Johnson, is sometimes concealed under pretended avarice, and sly hints of aversion to part with it; sometimes under stormy anger, and affectation of boundless rage; but oftener still under a show of thoughtless extravagance and gay neglect while to a penetrating eye none of these wretched veils suffice to keep the cruel truth from being seen. Poverty is hic et ubique,' says he, and if you do shut the jade out of the door, she will always contrive in some manner to poke her pale lean face in at the window.' "As the mind of Dr. Johnson was greatly expanded, p. 85. so his first care was for general, not particular or petty morality; and those teachers had more of his blame than praise, I think, who seek to oppress life with unnecessary scruples. Scruples would,' as he observed, certainly make men miserable, and seldom make them good. Let us ever,' he said, 'studiously fly from those instructors, against whom our Saviour denounces heavy judgments, for having bound up burdens grievous to be borne, and laid them on the shoulders of mortal men.' No one had, however, higher notions of the hard task of true christianity |