strange positions of his feet is a difficult task; sometimes he would make the back part of his heels to touch, sometimes his toes, as if he was aiming at making the form of a triangle, at least the two sides of one. Though, indeed, whether these were his gestures on this particular occasion I do not now recollect, it is so long since; but I well remember that they were so extraordinary that men, women, and children gathered round him, laughing. At last we sat down on

some logs of wood by the river-side, and they nearly dispersed, when he pulled out of his pocket Grotius's "De Veritate Religionis," over which he see-sawed at such a violent rate as to excite the curiosity of some people at a distance to come and see what was the matter with him. - Miss Reynolds.

HABIT OF SCRAPING HIS FINGERS.-Such was the heat and irritability of his blood, that not only did he pare his nails to the quick, but scraped the joints of his fingers with a penknife, till they seemed quite red and raw.-Boswell.

LAUGHTER.-I passed many hours with him on the 17th, of which I find all my memorial is, "much laughing." It should seem he had that day been in a humor for jocularity and merriment, and upon such occasions I never knew a man laugh more heartily. We may suppose that the high relish of a state so different from his habitual gloom produced more than ordinary exertions of that distinguishing faculty of man, which has puzzled philosophers so much to explain. Johnson's laugh was as remarkable as any circumstance in his manner. It was a kind of good-humored growl. Tom Davies described it drolly enough: "He laughs like a rhinoceros."--Boswell.

There is a beautiful little island in the Loch of Dunvegan, called Isa. Macleod said he would give it to Dr. Johnson on condition of his residing on it three months in the year;

nay, one month. Dr. Johnson was highly amused with the fancy. I have seen him please himself with little things, even with mere ideas like the present. He talked a great deal of this island; how he would build a house there, how he would fortify it, how he would have cannon, how he would plant, how he would sally out and take the Isle of Muck; and then he laughed with uncommon glee, and could hardly leave off. I have seen him do so at a small matter that struck him, and was a sport to no one else. Mr. Langton told me that one night he did so while the company were all grave about him; only Garrick, in his significant smart manner, darting his eyes around, exclaimed, "Very jocose, to be sure !"-Boswell.

He maintained the dignity and propriety of male succession, in opposition to the opinion of one of our friends, who had that day employed Mr. Chambers to draw his will, devising his estate to his three sisters, in preference to a remote heir male. Johnson called them "three dowdies," and said, with as high a spirit as the boldest baron in the most perfect days of the feudal system, "An ancient estate should always go to males. It is mighty foolish to let a stranger have it because he marries your daughter and takes your As for an estate newly acquired by trade, you may give it, if you will, to the dog Towser, and let him keep his own name."

name.

I have known him at times exceedingly diverted at what seemed to others a very small sport. He now laughed immoderately, without any reason that we could perceive, at our friend's making his will; called him the testator, and added, “I dare say he thinks he has done a mighty thing. He won't stay till he gets home to his seat in the country, to produce this wonderful deed: he'll call up the landlord of the first inn on the road, and, after a suitable preface upon the mortality and the uncertainty of life, will tell him that he should not delay making his will; and 'here, sir,'

will he say, 'is my will, which I have just made, with the assistance of one of the ablest lawyers in the kingdom;' and he will read it to him (laughing all the time). He believes he has made this will; but he did not make it: you, Chambers, made it for him. I trust you have had more conscience than to make him say, 'being of sound understanding;' ha, ha, ha! I hope he has left me a legacy. I'd have his will turned into verse, like a ballad."

In this playful manner did he run on, exulting in his own pleasantry, which certainly was not such as might be expected from the author of "The Rambler," but which is here preserved, that my readers may be acquainted even with the slightest occasional characteristics of so eminent

a man.

Mr. Chambers did not by any means relish this jocularity upon a matter of which pars magna fuit, and seemed impatient till he got rid of us. Johnson could not stop his merriment, but continued it all the way till he got without the Temple-gate. He then burst into such a fit of laughter that he appeared to be almost in a convulsion, and, in order to support himself, laid hold of one of the posts at the side of the foot-pavement, and sent forth peals so loud that, in the silence of the night, his voice seemed to resound from Temple Bar to Fleet Ditch.-Boswell.

DISLIKE FOR GESTICULATION.-He had a great aversion to gesticulating in company. He called once to a gentleman who offended him in that point, "Don't attitudenize.' And when another gentleman thought he was giving additional force to what he uttered by expressive movements of his hands, Johnson fairly seized them and held them down.-Boswell.

MANNER OF RECITING.-When repeating to me one day Grainger's "Ode on Solitude," I shall never forget the concordance of his voice with the grandeur of those images;

nor, indeed, the Gothic dignity of his aspect, his look and manner, when repeating sublime passages. But what was very remarkable, though his cadence in reading poetry was so judiciously emphatical as to give additional force to the words uttered, yet in reading prose, particularly on common or familiar subjects, nothing could be more injudicious than his manner, beginning every period with a pompous accent, and reading it with a whine, or with a kind of spasmodic struggle for utterance; and this not from any natural infirmity, but from a strange singularity, in reading on in one breath, as if he had made a resolution not to respire till he had closed the sentence.-Miss Reynolds (abridged).

TABLE MANNERS. When at table he was totally absorbed in the business of the moment: his looks seemed riveted to his plate; nor would he, unless when in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others, till he had satisfied his appetite, which was so fierce, and indulged with such intenseness, that while in the act of eating the veins of his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible. To those whose sensations were delicate this could not but be disgusting; and it was doubtless not very suitable to the character of a philosopher, who should be distinguished by self-command. But it must be owned that Johnson, though he could be rigidly abstemious, was not a temperate man either in eating or drinking. He could refrain, but he could not use moderately. He told me that he had fasted two days without inconvenience, and that he had never been hungry but once. They who beheld with wonder how much he ate upon all occasions, when his dinner was to his taste, could not easily conceive what he must have meant by hunger; and not only was he remarkable for the extraordinary quantity which he ate, but he was, or affected to be, a man of very nice discernment in the science of cookery. He used to descant critically on the dishes which had been at table

where he had dined or supped, and to recollect very minutely what he had liked.—Boswell.

It was at no time of his life pleasing to see him at a meal; the greediness with which he ate, his total inattention to those among whom he was seated, and his profound silence in the hour of refection, were circumstances that at the instant degraded him, and showed him to be more a sensualist than a philosopher.-Sir John Hawkins.

WINE-DRINKER AND ABSTAINER.-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 this."Boswell.

He has great virtue in not drinking wine or any fermented liquor, because, as he acknowledged to us, he could not do it in moderation. Lady Macleod would hardly believe him, and said, "I am sure, sir, you would not carry it too far." Johnson: "Nay, madam, it carried me. I took the opportunity of a long illness to leave it off. It was then prescribed to me not to drink wine; and having broken off the habit, I have never returned to it."— Boswell.

The strongest liquors, and in very large quantities, produced no other effect on him than moderate exhilaration. Once, and but once, he is known to have had his dose; a circumstance which he himself discovered, on finding one of his sesquipedalian words hang fire; he then started up, and gravely observed, "I think it time we should go to bed." "After a ten years' forbearance of every fluid except tea and sherbet, I drank," said he, "one glass of wine to the health of Sir Joshua Reynolds, on the evening of the day on which he was knighted. I never swallowed another drop,