the corner of St. James's Place, to which he had been directed, but not clearly, for he searched about some time, and could not find it at first; and said, "To direct one only to a corner shop is toying with one." I supposed he meant this as a play upon the word toy: it was the first time that I knew him stoop to such sport. After he had been some time in the shop, he sent for me to come out of the coach, and help him to choose a pair of silver buckles, as those he had were too small. Probably this alteration in dress had been suggested by Mrs. Thrale, by associating with whom, his external appearance was much improved. He got better clothes; and the dark colour, from which he never deviated, was enlivened by metal buttons. His wigs, too, were much better; and, during their travels in France, he was furnished with a Paris-made wig, of handsome construction.'

This choosing of silver buckles was a negotiation : Sir," said he, "I will not have the ridiculous large ones now in fashion; and I will give no more than a guinea for a pair." Such were the principles of the business; and, after some examination, he was fitted. As we drove along, I found him in a talking humour, of which I availed myself. BOSWELL. "I was this morning in Ridley's shop, Sir; and was told, that the collection called Johnsoniana [p. 479.] had sold very much." JOHNSON. "Yet the Journey to the Hebrides' has not had a great sale." "BOSWELL. "That is strange." JOHNSON. Yes, Sir; for in that book I have told the world a great deal that they did not know before."

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BOSWELL. "I drank chocolate, Sir, this morning with Mr. Eld; and, to my no small surprise, found him to be a Staffordshire Whig, a being which I did not believe had existed." JOHNSON. Sir, there are rascals in all countries." BOSWELL. "Eld said, a Tory was a creature generated between a nonjuring parson and one's grandmother." JOHNSON. "And I have always said, the first Whig was the Devil." BOSWELL. "He certainly was, Sir. The Devil was impatient of subordination; he was the first who resisted power :

Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.'” At General Paoli's were Sir Joshua Rey

1 In general his wigs were very shabby, and their fore parts were burned away by the near approach of the candle, which his short-sightedness rendered necessary in reading. At Streatham, Mr. Thrale's butler always kept a better wig in his own hands, with which he met Johnson at the parlourdoor, when the bell had called him down to dinner; and this ludicrous ceremony was performed every day. - CROKER.

2 Here he either was mistaken, or had a different notion of an extensive sale from what is generally entertained: for the fact is, that four thousand copies of that excellent work were sold very quickly. A new edition has been printed since his death, besides that in the collection of his works. - BOSWELL. Another edition has been printed since Mr. Boswell wrote the above, besides repeated editions in the general collection of his works during the last twenty years. MALONE, 1804. Hannah More says, that "Cadell the publisher told her, that he had sold 4000 the first week.” — Life, vol. i. p. 39. This enormous sale at first, made Johnson think perhaps the subsequent sale scanty.—CROKER, 1835.

nolds, Mr. Langton, Marchese Gherardi of Lombardy, and Mr. John Spottiswoode the younger, of Spottiswoode 3, the solicitor. At this time fears of an invasion were circulated; to obviate which Mr. Spottiswoode observed, that Mr. Fraser, the engineer, who had lately come from Dunkirk, said, that the French had the same fears of us. JOHNSON. "It is thus that mutual cowardice keeps us in peace. Were one half of mankind brave, and one half cowards, the brave would be always beating the cowards. Were all brave, they would lead a very uneasy life; all would be continually fighting: but being all cowards, we go on very well."

man

We talked of drinking wine. JoHNSON. "I require wine only when I am alone. I have then often wished for it, and often taken it." SPOTTISWOODE. "What, by way of a companion, Sir?" JOHNSON. "To get rid of myself, to send myself away. Wine gives great pleasure; and every pleasure is of itself a good. It is a good, unless counterbalanced by evil. A man may have a strong reason not to drink wine; and that may be greater than the pleasure. Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others. Sometimes it does. But the danger is, that while a man grows better pleased with himself, he may be growing less pleasing to others. Wine gives a nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what has been locked up in frost. But this may be good, or it may be bad." SPOTTISWOODE. Sir, wine is a key which opens a box; but this box may be either full or empty?" JOHNSON. "Nay, Sir, conversation is the key: wine is a picklock, which forces open the box, and injures it. A man should cultivate his mind so as to have that confidence and readiness without wine, which wine gives." BOSWELL. "The great difficulty of resisting wine is from benevolence. For instance, a good worthy man asks you to taste his wine, which he has had twenty years in his cellar." JOHNSON. "Sir, all this notion about benevolence arises from a man's imagining himself to be of more importance to others than he really is. They don't care a farthing whether he drinks wine or not."

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3 In the phraseology of Scotland, I should have said, "Mr. John Spottiswoode, the younger, of that ilk." Johnson knew that sense of the word very well, and has thus explained it in his" Dictionary" -voce, Ilk. "It also signifies the same; as, Mackintosh of that ilk, denotes a gentleman whose surname and the title of his estate are the same."- BOSWELL. Johnson derives it from the Saxon; but is it not rather an abbreviation of the Latin-illic, that place? Mr. Spottis woode married the daughter of Mr. William Strahan, and was the father of the present Spottiswoode of that ilk, and of the printer of this work. Ante, p. 438. n. 3.- CROKER, 1847. 4 It is observed in Waller's Life," in the "Biographia Britannica," that he drank only water; and that while he sat in a company who were drinking wine, "he had the dexterity to accommodate his discourse to the pitch of theirs as it sunk." If excess in drinking be meant, the remark is acutely just. But surely a moderate use of wine gives a gaiety of spirits which water-drinkers know not. BOSWELL.

Tasso's "Jerusalem," which he did; and then Johnson found fault with the simile of sweetening the edges of a cup for a child', being transferred from Lucretius into an epic poem. The General said he did not imagine Homer's poetry was so ancient as is supposed, because he ascribes to a Greek colony circumstances of refinement not found in Greece itself at a later period, when Thucydides wrote. JOHNSON. "I recollect but one passage quoted by Thucydides from Homer, which is not to be found in our copies of Homer's works; I am for the antiquity of Homer, and think that a Grecian colony, by being nearer Persia, might be more refined than the mother country.'

On Wednesday, April 29., I dined with him at Mr. Allan Ramsay's, where were Lord Binning, Dr. Robertson the historian, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the Honourable Mrs. Boscawen, widow of the Admiral, and mother of the present Viscount Falmouth; of whom, if it be not presumptuous in me to praise her, I would say, that her manners are the most agreeable, and her conversation the best, of any lady with whom I ever had the happiness to be acquainted. Before Johnson came, we talked a good deal of him. Ramsay said, he had always found him a very polite man, and that he treated him with great respect, which he did very sincerely. I said, I worshipped him. ROBERTSON. "But some of you spoil him: you should not worship him; you should worship no man.' BOSWELL. "I cannot help worshipping him, he is so much superior to other men.' ROBERTSON. "In criticism, and in wit and conversation, he is, no doubt, very excellent; but in other respects he is not above other men he will believe any thing, and will strenuously defend the most minute circumstance connected with the church of England." BOSWELL. "Believe me, Doctor, you are much mistaken as to this; for when you talk with him calmly in private, he is very liberal in his way of thinking." ROBERTSON. "He and I have been always very gracious: the first time I met him was one evening at Strahan's, when he had just had an unlucky altercation with Adam Smith, to whom he had been so rough, that Strahan, after Smith was gone, had remonstrated with him, and told him that I was coming soon, and that he was uneasy to think that he might behave in the same manner to me. No, no, Sir (said Johnson), I warrant you, Robertson and I shall do very well.' Accordingly he was gentle and good-humoured

1 The passages are in the Jerusalem, canto i. st.3., and in Lucretius, i. 935., and again, iv. 12. -CROKER.

2 The quotations in the third book of Thucydides are not from the Iliat or Odyssey, but from the Hymn to Apollo, attributed to Homer. It is, as Lord Aberdeen observes to me, remarkable that the most judicious of the Greek historians should have quoted this hymn, not only without expressing any doubt of its authenticity, but as historical proof, inore especially as in the first book of his History there is great evidence of a real spirit of inqui y, and of something like the philosophical criticism of modern times." CROKER, 1847.

and courteous with me, the whole evening; and he has been so upon every occasion that we have met since. I have often said (laughing), that I have been in a great measure indebted to Smith for my good reception." BoswELL. "His power of reasoning is very strong, and he has a peculiar art of drawing characters, which is as rare as good portrait painting." SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. "He is undoubtedly admirable in this; but, in order to mark the characters which he draws, he overcharges them, and gives people more than they really have, whether of good or bad.'

No sooner did he, of whom we had been thus talking so easily, arrive, than we were all as quiet as a school upon the entrance of the headmaster; and we very soon sat down to a table covered with such a variety of good things, as contributed not a little to dispose him to be pleased.

5

RAMSAY. "I am old enough to have been a contemporary of Pope. His poetry was highly admired in his life-time, more a great deal than after his death." JOHNSON. Sir, it has not been less admired since his death; no authors ever had so much fame in their own life-time as Pope and Voltaire; and Pope's poetry has been as much admired since his death as during his life: it has only not been as much talked of; but that is owing to its being now more distant, and people having other writings to talk of. Virgil is less talked of than Pope, and Homer is less talked of than Virgil; but they are not less admired. We must read what the world reads at the moment. It has been maintained that this superfetation, this teeming of the press in modern times, is prejudicial to good literature, because it obliges us to read so much of what is of inferior value, in order to be in the fashion; so that better works are neglected for want of time, because a man will have more gratification of his vanity in conversation, from having read modern books, than from having read the best works of antiquity. But it must be considered, that we have now more knowledge generally diffused: all our ladies read now, which is a great extension. Modern writers are the moons of literature; they shine with reflected light, with light borrowed from the ancients. Greece appears to me to be the fountain of knowledge; Rome of elegance." RAMSAY. "I suppose Homer's Iliad' to be a collection of pieces which had been written before his time. I should like to see a trans

3 Frances, daughter of William Evelyn Glanville, Esq., married, in 1742, to Admiral Boscawen. She died in 1805. This excellent and highly-gifted lady makes a considerable figure in the correspondence of Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Carter, and Hannah More. CROKER.

4 This, probably, was the scene, the exaggeration or misrepresentation of which may have given rise to Professor Miller's scandalous anecdote. See antè, p. 393. n. 1.CROKER.

5 Mr. Ramsay was at least 31 (antè, p. 579. n. 3), at Pope's death.-CROKER.

lation of it in poetical prose, like the book of Ruth or Job." ROBERTSON. "Would you, Dr. Johnson, who are a master of the English language, but try your hand upon a part of it?" JOHNSON. "Sir, you would not read it without the pleasure of verse.

We talked of antiquarian researches. JOHNSON. "All that is really known of the ancient state of Britain is contained in a few pages. We can know no more than what the old writers have told us; yet what large books have we upon it, the whole of which, excepting such parts as are taken from those old writers, is all a dream, such as Whitaker's Manchester. I have heard Henry's History of Britain' well spoken of; I am told it is carried on in separate divisions, as the civil, the military, the religious history. I wish much to have one branch well done, and that is the history of manners, of common life." ROBERTSON. "Henry should have applied his attention to that alone, which is enough for any man; and he might have found a great deal scattered in various books, had he read solely with that view. Henry erred in not selling his first volume at a moderate price to the booksellers, that they might have pushed him on till he had got reputation. I sold my 'History of Scotland at a moderate price, as a work by which the booksellers might either gain or not; and Cadell has told me, that Millar and he have got six thousand pounds by it. I afterwards received a much higher price for my writings. An author should sell his first work for what the booksellers will give, till it shall appear whether he is an author of merit, or, which is the same thing as to purchasemoney, an author who pleases the public."

Dr. Robertson expatiated on the character of a certain nobleman [Lord Clive]; that he was one of the strongest-minded men that ever lived; that he would sit in company quite sluggish, while there was nothing to call forth his intellectual vigour; but the moment that any important subject was started, for instance, how this country is to be defended against a French invasion, he would rouse himself, and show his extraordinary talents, with the most powerful ability and animation. JOHNSON. "Yet this man cut his own throat. The true strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small. Now, I am told the King of Prussia will say to a servant, Bring me a bottle of such a wine, which came in such a year; it

1 This experiment, which Madame Dacier made in vain, has since been tried in our own language, by the editor of "Ossian ;" and we must either think very meanly of his abilities, or allow that Dr. Johnson was in the right. And Mr. Cowper, a man of real genius, has miserably failed in his blank verse translation.- BOSWELL. It is the fashion to call Cowper's a miserable failure, and by the side of Pope's sweetness and brilliancy it undoubtedly seems deficient in both euphony and splendour. Like an engraving, or sepia sketch of a fine picture, the outline is exact, but the charm of the colouring is absent. It is, however, the nearest portrait we have of Homer, and the more one reads it, the better it seems. CROKER, 1835.

lies in such a corner of the cellars.' I would have a man great in great things, and elegant in little things." He said to me afterwards, when we were by ourselves, "Robertson was in a mighty romantic humour; he talked of one whom he did not know; but I downed him with the King of Prussia.” "Yes, Sir," said I, "you threw a bottle at his head."

An ingenious gentleman was mentioned, concerning whom both Robertson and Ramsay agreed that he had a constant firmness of mind; for, after a laborious day, and amidst a multiplicity of cares and anxieties, he would sit down with his sisters, and be quite cheerful and good-humoured. Such a disposition, it was observed, was the happy gift of nature. JOHNSON. "I do not think so: a man has from nature a certain portion of mind; the use he makes of it depends upon his own free will. That a man has always the same firmness of mind, I do not say: because every man feels his mind less firm at one time than another; but I think, a man's being in a good or bad humour depends upon his will." I, however, could not help thinking that a man's humour is often uncontrollable by his will.

Sir,

Johnson harangued against drinking wine. "A man," said he, "may choose whether he will have abstemiousness and knowledge, or claret and ignorance." Dr. Robertson (who is very companionable) was beginning to dissent as to the proscription of claret. JOHNSON (with a placid smile)." Nay, Sir, you shall not differ with me; as I have said that the man is most perfect who takes in the most things, I am for knowledge and claret." ROBERTSON (holding a glass of generous claret in his hand). I can only drink your health." JOHNSON. "Sir, I should be sorry if you should be ever in such a state as to be able to do nothing more." ROBERTSON. "Dr. Johnson, allow me to say, that in one respect I have the advantage of you: when you were in Scotland you would not come to hear any of our preachers; whereas, when I am here, I attend your public worship without scruple, and, indeed, with great satisfaction." JOHNSON." Why, Sir, that is not so extraordinary: the King of Siam sent ambassadors to Louis the Fourteenth, but Louis the Fourteenth sent none to the King of Siam." 3

Here my friend for once discovered a want of knowledge or forgetfulness; for Louis the Fourteenth did send an embassy to the King of Siam, and the Abbé Choisi, who was em

2 I know not that there is on record a more striking instance of the contrary of this proposition than Johnson himself much of whose "bad humour" was undoubtedly constitutional. — CROKER, 1847.

3 Mrs. Piozzi confidently mentions this as having passed in Scotland. - Anecdotes, p. 62- BosWELL. Johnson himself told her the story, but whether it had happened in London or in Edinburgh, he probably did not state; nor does it in the least degree signify.- CkOKER, 1847.

4 The Abbé de Choisi was sent by Louis XIV. on an embassy to the King of Siam in 1683, with a view, it has been said, to convert the king of the country to Christianity. MALONE. The Chevalier de Chaumont was the ambassador:

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