244 Mrs. Montagu. [A.D. 1778. not know that Campbell ever lied with pen and ink; but you could not entirely depend on any thing he told you in conversation if there was fact mixed with it. However, I loved Campbell he was a solid orthodox man: he had a reverence for religion. Though defective in practice, he was religious in principle; and he did nothing grossly wrong that I have heard'.' I told him, that I had been present the day before, when Mrs. Montagu, the literary lady', sat to Miss Reynolds for her picture; and that she said, 'she had bound up Mr. Gibbon's History without the last two offensive chapters3; for that she thought the book so far good, as it gave, in an elegant manner, the substance of the bad writers medii ævi, which the late Lord Lyttelton advised her to read.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, she has not read them she shews none of this impetuosity to me: she does not know Greek, and, I fancy, knows little Latin. She is willing you should think she knows them; but she does not say she does'.' BOSWELL. Mr. Harris, who was present, agreed with all the time, and drank equally.' Johnson, who agrees in this, told us BOSWELL. See ante, i. 417. 2 In the following September she is thus mentioned by Miss Burney:'Mrs. Thrale. "To-morrow, Sir, Mrs. Montagu dines here, and then you of a that a Mrs. Hervey of his acquaintance says she can remember Mrs. Montagu trying for this same air and manner.' Ib. p. 122. See ante, ii. 88. 3 Only one volume had been published; it ended with the sixteenth chapter. 4 Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 462) says 'She did not take at Edinburgh. Lord Kames, who was at first catched with her Parnassian coquetry, said at last that he believed she had as much learning as a welleducated college lad here of sixteen. In genuine feelings and deeds she was remarkably deficient. We saw her often in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, and in that town, where there was no audience for such an actress as she was, her natural character was displayed, which was that of an active manager of her affairs, a crafty chaperon, and a keen pursuer of her interest, not to be outdone by the sharpest coal-dealer on the Tyne; but in this capacity she was not disher.' From the engraving in the Coinmon Room of University College. Boswell's Johnson, Vol. III. To face p. 245. [See also vol. iv. p. 421 note 2.] Aetat. 69.] Johnson's abstinence from wine. 245 Harris is a her.' JOHNSON. 'Harris was laughing at her, Sir. sound sullen scholar; he does not like interlopers. Harris, however, is a prig, and a bad prig'. I looked into his book, and thought he did not understand his own system.' BOSWELL. 'He says plain things in a formal and abstract way, to be sure: but his method is good: for to have clear notions upon any subject, we must have recourse to analytick arrangement.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is what every body does, whether they will or no. But sometimes things may be made darker by definition. I see a cow, I define her, Animal quadrupes ruminans cornutum. But a goat ruminates, and a cow may have no horns. Cow is plainer.' BOSWELL. 'I think Dr. Franklin's definition of Man a good one -'A tool-making animal.' JOHNSON. 'But many a man never made a tool; and suppose a man without arms, he could not make a tool.' Talking of drinking wine, he said, 'I did not leave off wine, because I could not bear it; I have drunk three bottles of port without being the worse for it. University College has witnessed this3. BOSWELL. 'Why then, Sir, did you leave it off?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, because it is so much better for a man to be sure that he is never to be intoxicated, never to lose the power over himself. I shall not begin to drink wine again, till I grow old, and want it.' BOSWELL. 'I think, Sir, you once said to me, that not to drink wine was a great deduction from life.' JOHNSON. 'It is a diminution of pleasure, to be sure; but I do not say a diminution of happiness. There pleasing, for she was not acting a part.' What my friend meant by these words concerning the amiable philosopher of Salisbury, I am at a loss to understand. A friend suggests, that Johnson thought his manner as a writer affected, while at the same time the matter did not compensate for that fault. In short, that he meant to make a remark quite different from that which a celebrated gentleman made on a very eminent physician : 'He is a coxcomb, but a satisfactory coxcomb. BOSWELL. Malone says that the celebrated gentleman was 246 Pleasure and happiness. [A.D. 1778. is more happiness in being rational.' BOSWELL. But if we could have pleasure always, should not we be happy? The greatest part of men would compound for pleasure.' JOHNSON. 'Supposing we could have pleasure always, an intellectual man would not compound for it. The greatest part of men would compound, because the greatest part of men are gross.' BOSWELL. 'I allow there may be greater pleasure than from wine. I have had more pleasure from your conversation, I have indeed; I assure you I have.' JOHNSON. 'When we talk of pleasure, we mean sensual pleasure. When a man says, he had pleasure with a woman, he does not mean conversation, but something of a very different nature. Philosophers tell you, that pleasure is contrary to happiness. Gross men prefer animal pleasure. So there are men who have preferred living among savages. Now what a wretch must he be, who is content with such conversation as can be had among savages! You may remember an officer at Fort Augustus', who had served in America, told us of a woman whom they were obliged to bind, in order to get her back from savage life.' BOSWELL. 'She must have been an animal, a beast.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, she was a speaking cat.' I mentioned to him that I had become very weary in a company where I heard not a single intellectual sentence, except that 'a man who had been settled ten years in Minorca was become a much inferiour man to what he was in London, because a man's mind grows narrow in a narrow place.' JOHNSON. A man's mind grows narrow in a narrow place, whose mind is enlarged only because he has lived in a large place but what is got by books and thinking is preserved in a narrow place as well as in a large place. A man cannot know modes of life as well in Minorca as in London; but he may study mathematicks as well in Minorca.' BOSWELL. 'I don't know, Sir: if you had remained ten years in the Isle of Col, you would not have been the man that you now are.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, if I had been there from fifteen to twenty-five; but not if from twenty-five to thirty-five.' BOSWELL. I own, Sir, the spirits which I have in London 1 See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 31. make |