"give me We were

had been told so much of, "Sir," said he, leave to tell something of Mr. Burke now.' all silent, and the honest Hibernian began to relate how Mr. Burke went to see the collieries in a distant province; and “he would go down into the bowels of the earth in a bag, and he would examine every thing: he went in a bag, Sir, and ventured his health and his life for knowledge; but he took care of his clothes, that they should not be spoiled, for he went down in a bag.” Well, Sir," says Mr. Johnson good-humouredly, "if our friend Mund should die in any of these hazardous exploits, you and I would write his life and panegyric together; and your chapter of it should be entitled thus: Burke in a Bag.""

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He had always a very great personal regard and particular affection for Mr. Edmund Burke, as well as an esteem difficult for me to repeat, though for him only easy to express. And when, at the end of the year 1774, the general election called us all different ways, and broke up the delightful society in which we had spent some time at Beaconsfield, Dr. Johnson shook the hospitable master of the house kindly by the hand, and said, "Farewell, my dear Sir, and remember that I wish you all the success which ought to be wished you, which can possibly be wished you indeed-by an honest man."

112. Sorrows of Vanity.

When I have told how many follies Dr. Johnson knew of others, I must not omit to mention with how much fidelity he would always have kept them concealed, could they of whom he knew the absurdities have been contented, in the common phrase, to keep their own counsel. But, returning home one day from dining at the chaplain's table, he told me, that Dr. Goldsmith had given a very comical and unnecessarily exact recital there, of his own feelings when his play

was hissed; telling the company how he went indeed to the Literary Club at night, and chatted gaily among his friends, as if nothing had happened amiss; that to impress them still more forcibly with an idea of his magnanimity, he even sang his favourite song about an old woman tossed in a blanket seventeen times as high as the moon: "but all this while I was suffering horrid tortures," said he, "and verily believe that if I had put a bit into my mouth it would have strangled me on the spot, I was so excessively ill; but I made more noise than usual to cover all that, and so they never perceived my not eating, nor I believe at all imaged to themselves the anguish of my heart: but when all were gone except Johnson here, I burst out a crying, and even swore that I would never write again. "All

which, Doctor," says Mr. Johnson, amazed at his odd frankness, “I thought had been a secret between you and me; and I am sure I would not have said any thing about it for the world." "Now see," repeated he, when he told the story, "what a figure a man makes who thus unaccountably chooses to be the frigid narrator of his own disgrace. Il volto sciolto, ed i pensieri stretti, was a proverb made on purpose for such mortals, to keep people, if possible, from being thus the heralds of their own shame: for what compassion can they gain by such silly narratives? No man should be expected to sympathise with the sorrows of vanity. If, then, you are mortified by any ill usage, whether real or supposed, keep at least the account of such mortifications to yourself, and forbear to proclaim how meanly you are thought on by others, unless you desire to be meanly thought of by all."

113. Superfluous Ingenuity. Nicknames.

The little history of another friend's superfluous ingenuity will contribute to introduce a similar remark. He had a daughter of about fourteen years old, as I re

member, fat and clumsy: and though the father adored, and desired others to adore her, yet being aware perhaps that she was not what the French call pétrie des graces, and thinking, I suppose, that the old maxim, of beginning to laugh at yourself first where you have any thing ridiculous about you, was a good one, he comically enough called his girl Trundle when he spoke of her; and many who bore neither of them any ill-will felt disposed to laugh at the happiness of the appellation. "See now," says Dr. Johnson, "what haste people are in to be hooted. Nobody ever thought of this fellow nor of his daughter, could he but have been quiet himself, and forborne to call the eyes of the world on his dowdy and her deformity. But it teaches one to see at least, that if nobody else will nickname one's children, the parents will e'en do it themselves."

114. " 'Blinking Sam."

All this held true in matters to Mr. Johnson of more

serious consequence. When Sir Joshua Reynolds had painted his portrait looking into the slit of his pen, and holding it almost close to his eye, as was his general custom, he felt displeased, and told me, "he would not be known by posterity for his defects only, let Sir Joshua do his worst." I said, in reply, that Reynolds had no such difficulties about himself, and that he might observe the picture which hung up in the room where we were talking, represented Sir Joshua holding his ear in his hand to catch the sound. "He may paint himself as deaf if he chooses," replied Johnson; "but I will not be blinking Sam."

115. Shakspeare.

It is chiefly for the sake of evincing the regularity and steadiness of Mr. Johnson's mind that I have given these trifling memoirs, to show that his soul was not different from that of another person, but, as it was, greater; and to give those who did not know him a just

idea of his acquiescence in what we call vulgar prejudices, and of his extreme distance from those notions which the world has agreed, I know not very well why, to call romantic. It is, indeed, observable in his preface to Shakspeare, that while other critics expatiate on the creative powers and vivid imagination of that matchless poet, Dr. Johnson commends him for giving so just a representation of human manners, "that from his scenes a hermit might estimate the value of society, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions."

116. Choice of a Wife.

The general and constant advice he gave, too, when consulted about the choice of a wife, a profession, or whatever influences a man's particular and immediate happiness, was always to reject no positive good from fears of its contrary consequences. "Do not," said he, “forbear to marry a beautiful woman if you can find such, out of a fancy that she will be less constant than an ugly one; or condemn yourself to the society of coarseness and vulgarity for fear of the expenses, or other dangers, of elegance and personal charms; which have been always acknowledged as a positive good, and for the want of which there should be always given some weighty compensation. I have, however," continued Mr. Johnson, seen some prudent fellows who forbore to connect themselves with beauty lest coquetry should be near, and with wit or birth lest insolence should lurk behind them, till they have been forced by their discretion to linger life away in tasteless stupidity, and choose to count the moments by remembrance of pain instead of enjoyment of pleasure."

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When professions were talked of, "Scorn,” said Mr. Johnson, "to put your behaviour under the dominion of canters: never think it clever to call physic a mean

study, or law a dry one; or ask a baby of seven years old which way his genius leads him, when we all know that a boy of seven years old has no genius for any thing except a peg-top and an apple-pye; but fix on some business where much money may be got and little virtue risked follow that business steadily, and do not live as Roger Ascham says the wits do, men know not how; and at last die obscurely, men mark not where.""

118. Opinion of the World.

Dr. Johnson had a veneration for the voice of mankind beyond what most people will own; and as he liberally confessed that all his own disappointments proceeded from himself, he hated to hear others complain of general injustice. I remember when lamentation was made of the neglect showed to Jeremiah Markland, a great philologist, as some one ventured to call him :"He is a scholar undoubtedly, Sir," replied Dr. Johnson; "but remember that he would run from the world, and that it is not the world's business to run after him. I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.”(')

(1) Mr. Markland, who has favoured me with many kind and useful suggestions, observes on this passage, that "Johnson's censure was undeserved. Jeremiah Markland was certainly no growler. He sought for, because he loved, retirement; and rejected all the honours and rewards which were liberally offered to his acceptance. During a long life, he devoted himself unceasingly to those pursuits for which he was best fitted, collating the classics, and illustrating the Scriptures. 'Séquantur alii famam, aucupentur divitias, hic illa oculis irretortis contemplatus, post terga constanter rejecit.... In solitudinem se recepit, studiis excolendis et pauperibus sublevandis unicè intentus.' Such is the character given of Markland by his pupil and friend Edward Clarke." Mrs. Piozzi's flippant expression (" a great philologist, as some one ventured to call him") will excite a smile, when we recollect what Markland has done as a philologist, and the estimation in which he has been held both by the most learned of his contemporaries (including Johnson himself), and the most distinguished scholars of our own time. Dr. Bur