66 Some one urged in his presence the preference of hope to possession; and, as I remember, produced an Italian sonnet on the subject. "Let us not," cries Johnson, amuse ourselves with subtleties and sonnets, when speaking about hope, which is the follower of faith and the precursor of eternity; but if you only mean those air-built hopes which to-day excites and tomorrow will destroy, let us talk away, and remember that we only talk of the pleasures of hope: we feel those of possession, and no man in his senses would change the last for the first: such hope is a mere bubble, that by a gentle breath may be blown to what size you will almost, but a rough blast bursts it at once. Hope is an amusement rather than a good, and adapted to none but very tranquil minds." 88. Unprofitable Chat. 66 Mr. Johnson hated what we call unprofitable chat; and to a gentleman who had disserted some time about the natural history of the mouse "I wonder what such a one would have said," cried Johnson, "if he had ever had the luck to see a lion !" 89. Apparitions. I well remember that at Brighthelmstone once, when he was not present, Mr. Beauclerc asserted that he was afraid of spirits; and I, who was secretly offended at the charge, asked him, the first opportunity I could find, what ground he had ever given to the world for such a report? "I can," replied he, "recollect nothing nearer it, than my telling Dr. Lawrence many years ago, that a long time after my poor mother's death, I heard her voice call Sam!" What answer did the doctor make to your story, Sir," said I? "None in the world," replied he; and suddenly changed the con versation. Now, as Mr. Johnson had a most unshaken faith, without any mixture of credulity, this story must either have been strictly true, or his persuasion of its truth the effect of disordered spirits. I relate the anecdote precisely as he told it me; but could not prevail on him to draw out the talk into length, for further satisfaction of my curiosity. 90. Talents and Erudition. He always made a great difference in his esteem between talents and erudition; and when he saw a person eminent for literature, though wholly unconversable, it fretted him. "Teaching such tonies," said he to me one day, "is like setting a lady's diamonds in lead, which only obscures the lustre of the stone, and makes the possessor ashamed on 't.” 91. Every-day Knowledge. Useful, and what we call every-day knowledge had the most of his just praise. "Let your boy learn arithmetic, dear Madam," was his advice to the mother of a rich young heir: " he will not then be a prey to every rascal which this town swarms with: teach him the value of money, and how to reckon it; ignorance to a wealthy lad of one-and-twenty is only so much fat to a sick sheep: it just serves to call the rooks about him; And all that prey on vice or folly There the lender, grave and sly." These improviso lines, making part of a long copy of verses which my regard for the youth (1), on whose birthday they were written, obliges me to suppress lest they should give him pain, show a mind of surprising (1) [Sir John Lade. See antè, Vol. VIII. p. 414.] activity and warmth; the more so, as he was past seventy years of age when he composed them. 92. Mental Decay. But nothing more certainly offended Mr. Johnson, than the idea of a man's faculties (mental ones I mean) decaying by time. "It is not true, Sir," would he say; "what a man could once do, he would always do, unless indeed by dint of vicious indolence, and compliance with the nephews and nieces who crowd round an old fellow, and help to tuck him in, till he, contented with the exchange of fame for ease, e'en resolves to let them set the pillows at his back, and gives no further proof of his existence than just to suck the jelly that prolongs it." 93. Life and Romance. For such a life, or such a death, Dr. Johnson was indeed never intended by Providence: his mind was like a warm climate, which brings every thing to perfection suddenly and vigorously, not like the alembicated productions of artificial fire, which always betray the difficulty of bringing them forth when their size is disproportionate to their flavour. "Je ferais un Roman tout comme un autre, mais la vie n'est point un Roman," says a famous French writer; and this was so certainly the opinion of the author of the Rambler, that all his conversation precepts tended towards the dispersion of romantic ideas, and were chiefly intended to promote the cultivation of "That which before thee lies in daily life." 94. Clarissa. Lear. Iago. Falstaff. And when he talked of authors, his praise went spontaneously to such passages as are sure, in his own phrase, to leave something behind them useful on common occasions, or observant of common manners. For example, it was not the two last, but the two first, volumes of Clarissa that he prized; "for give me a sick bed, and a dying lady," said he, “and I'll be pathetic myself: but Richardson had picked the kernel of life,” he said, “while Fielding was contented with the husk." It was not King Lear cursing his daughters or deprecating the storm, that I remember his commendations of; but Iago's ingenious malice and subtle revenge; or Prince Hal's gay compliance with the vices of Falstaff, whom he all along despised. Those plays had, indeed, no rivals in Johnson's favour: "No man but Shakspeare," he said, "could have drawn Sir John." 95. Addison's Prose. His manner of criticising and commending Addison's prose, was the same in conversation as we read it in the printed strictures, and many of the expressions used have been heard to fall from him on common occasions. It was notwithstanding observable enough (or I fancied so), that he did never like, though he always thought fit to praise it; and his praises resembled those of a man who extols the superior elegance of high painted porcelain, while he himself always chooses to eat off plate. I told him so one day, and he neither denied it nor appeared displeased. 96. The Pathetic in Poetry. Of the pathetic in poetry he never liked to speak ; and the only passage I ever heard him applaud as particularly tender in any common book, was Jane Shore's exclamation in the last act, "Forgive me! but forgive me!" It was not, however, from the want of a susceptible heart that he hated to cite tender expressions; for he was more strongly and more violently affected by the force of words representing ideas capable of affecting him at all, than any other man in the world, I believe; and when he would try to repeat the celebrated Prosa Ecclesiastica pro Mortuis, as it is called, beginning Dies iræ, Dies illa, he could never pass the stanza ending thus, Tantus labor non sit cassus, without bursting into a flood of tears; which sensibility I used to quote against him when he would inveigh against devotional poetry, and protest that all religious verses were cold and feeble, and unworthy the subject; which ought to be treated with higher reverence, he said, than either poets or painters could presume to excite or bestow. 97. Promptitude of Thought. His Promptitude of thought, and quickness of expression, were among the peculiar felicities of Johnson. notions rose up like the dragon's teeth sowed by Cadmus all ready clothed, and in bright armour too, fit for immediate battle. He was therefore (as somebody is said to have expressed it) a tremendous converser, and few people ventured to try their skill against an antagonist with whom contention was so hopeless. One gentleman, however, who dined at a nobleman's house in his company and that of Mr. Thrale, to whom I was obliged for the anecdote, was willing to enter the lists in defence of King William's character; and having opposed and contradicted Johnson two or three times petulantly enough, the master of the house began to feel uneasy, and expect disagreeable consequences: to avoid which he said, loud enough for the Doctor to hear, "Our friend here has no meaning now in all this, except just to relate at club to-morrow how he teased Johnson at dinner to-day-this is all to do himself honour.” 66 No, upon my word," replied the other, "I see no honour in it, whatever you may do." "Well, Sir!" returned Mr. Johnson sternly, "if you do not see the honour, I am sure I feel the disgrace." |