"Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him. Men have a solicitude about fame; and the greater share they have of it, the more afraid they are of losing it." I silently asked myself, "Is it possible that the great SAMUEL JOHNSON really entertains any such apprehension, and is not confident that his exalted fame is established upon a foundation never to be shaken?"

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He this evening drank a bumper to Sir David Dalrymple, as a man of worth, a scholar, and a wit." “I have,” said he, “never heard of him, except from you; but let him know my opinion of him for, as he does not shew himself much in the world, he should have the praise of the few who hear of him."

Methodists. Johnson's "Walk.". The Convoca

To

ON Tuesday, July 26., I found Mr. Johnson alone. It was a very wet day, and I again complained of the disagreeable effects of such weather. JOHNSON. "Sir, this is all imagination, which physicians encourage; for man lives in air, as a fish lives in water; so that, if the atmosphere press heavy from above, there is an equal resistance from below. be sure, bad weather is hard upon people who are obliged to be abroad; and men cannot labour so well in the open air in bad weather, as in good: but, Sir, a smith or tailor, whose work is within doors, will surely do as much in rainy weather as in fair. Some very delicate frames indeed may be affected by wet weather; but not common constitutions."

We talked of the education of children; and I asked him what he thought was best to teach them first. JOHNSON. "Sir, it is no matter what you • teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first. Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learnt them both." On Thursday, July 28., we again supped in private at the Turk's Head coffee-house. JOHNSON. "Swift has a higher reputation than he deserves. His excellence is strong sense; for, his humour though very well, is not remarkably good. I doubt whether the Tale of a Tub' be his; for he never owned it, and it is much above his usual manner. (1)

"Thomson, I think, had as much of the poet about him as most writers. Every thing appeared to him through the medium of his favourite pursuit. He could not have viewed those two candles burning but with a poetical eye."

"Has not (2) a great deal of wit, Sir?" JOHNSON. "I do not think so, Sir. He is, indeed, continually attempting wit, but he fails. And I

(1) This opinion was given by him more at large at a subsequent period. See post, Aug. 16. 1773.-B.-How could Johnson doubt that Swift was the author of the Tale of a Tub, when, as he himself relates in his Life of Swift, "No other claimants can be produced; and when Archbishop Sharpe and the Duchess of Somerset, by showing it to Queen Anne, debarred Swift of a bishoprick, he did not deny it ?" We have, moreover, Swift's own acknowledgment of it, in his letter to Ben. Tooke the printer, June 29. 1710. C.

(2) There is no doubt that this blank must be filled with the name of Mr. Burke. See post, Aug. 15. and Sept. 15. 1773, and April 25. 1778. — C.

have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it."

He laughed heartily when I mentioned to him a saying of his concerning Mr. Thomas Sheridan, which Foote took a wicked pleasure to circulate. "Why, Sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an access of stupidity, Sir, is not in Nature.". "So," said he,

"I allowed him all his own merit."

the

He now added, "Sheridan cannot bear me. I bring his declamation to a point. I ask him a plain question, What do you mean to teach?' Besides, Sir, what influence can Mr. Sheridan have upon language of this great country, by his narrow exertions? Sir, it is burning a farthing candle at Dover, to show light at Calais."

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Talking of a young man (1) who was uneasy from thinking that he was very deficient in learning and knowledge, he said, “ A man has no reason to complain who holds a middle place, and has many below him; and perhaps he has not six of his years above him;-perhaps not one. Though he may know any thing perfectly, the general mass of knowledge that he has acquired is considerable. Time will do for him all that is wanting."

The conversation then took a philosophical turn. JOHNSON. "Human experience, which is constantly contradicting theory, is the great test of truth. A

(1) [No doubt Boswell himself.]

system, built upon the discoveries of a great many minds, is always of more strength, than what is produced by the mere workings of any one mind, which, of itself, can do little. There is not so poor a book in the world that would not be a prodigious effort were it wrought out entirely by a single mind, without the aid of prior investigators. The French writers are superficial, because they are not scholars, and so proceed upon the mere power of their own minds; and we see how very little power they have."

"As to the Christian religion, Sir, besides the strong evidence which we have for it, there is a balance in its favour from the number of great men who have been convinced of its truth, after a serious consideration of the question. Grotius was an acute man, a lawyer, a man accustomed to examine evidence, and he was convinced. Grotius was not a recluse, but a man of the world, who certainly had no bias to the side of religion. Sir Isaac Newton set out an infidel, and came to be a very firm believer." (1)

He this evening again recommended to me to

(1) Where, the Bishop of Ferns asks, did Johnson learn this? It is true that Dr. Horsley declined publishing some papers on religious subjects which Newton left behind him some have suspected that they were tainted with Unitarianism; others (probably from a consideration of his work on the Revelations) believed that they were in a strain of mysticism not (in the opinion of his friends) worthy of so great a genius; and the recent publication of his two letters to Locke, in a style of infantine simplicity (see Lord King's Life of Locke), gives additional colour to this latter opinion: but for Johnson's assertion that he set out an infidel, there appears no authority, and all the nferences are the other way.

VOL. II.

C.

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