the Reverend Mr. Hayes had published, with the significant title of "Sermons left for publication by the Reverend John Taylor, LL.D." our conviction will be complete.

I, however, would not have it thought that Dr. Taylor, though he could not write like Johnson (as, indeed, who could ?) did not sometimes compose sermons as good as those which we generally have from very respectable divines. He showed me one with notes on the margin in Johnson's handwriting; and I was present when he read another to Johnson, that he might have his opinion of it, and Johnson said it was "very well." These, we may be sure, were not Johnson's; for he was above little arts or tricks of deception.

Johnson was by no means of opinion, that every man of a learned profession should consider it as incumbent upon him, or as necessary to his credit, to appear as an author. When, in the ardour of ambition for literary fame, I regretted to him one day that an eminent judge had nothing of it, and therefore would leave no perpetual monument of himself to posterity: "Alas, Sir," said Johnson," what a mass of confusion should we have, if every bishop, and every judge, every lawyer, physician, and divine, were to write books."

I mentioned to Johnson a respectable person of a very strong mind, who had little of that tenderness which is common to human nature; as an instance of which, when I suggested to him that he should invite his son, who had been settled ten years in foreign parts, to come home and pay him a visit, his answer was, “No, no; let him mind his business." JOHNSON: "I do not agree with him, Sir, in this. Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life."

In the evening, Johnson, being in very good spirits, entertained us with several characteristical portraits; I regret that any of them escaped my retention and diligence. I found from experience, that to collect my friend's conversation so as to exhibit it with any degree of its original flavour, it was necessary to write it down without delay. To record his sayings, after some distance of time, was like preserving or pickling long-kept and faded fruits, or other vegetables, which, when in that state, have little or nothing of their taste when fresh.

I shall present my readers with a series of what I gathered this evening from the Johnsonian garden.

“My friend, the late Earl of Cork, had a great desire to maintain the literary character of his family; he was a genteel man, but did not keep up the dignity of his rank. He was so generally civil, that nobody thanked him for it."

“Did we not hear so much said of Jack Wilkes, we should think more highly of his conversation. Jack has a great variety of talk; Jack is a scholar, and Jack has the manners of a gentleman. But after hearing his name sounded from pule to pole, as the phoenix of

convivial felicity, we are disappointed in his company. He has always been at me: but I would do Jack a kindness, rather than not. The contest is now over."

"Garrick's gaiety of conversation has delicacy and elegance: Foote makes you laugh more; but Foote has the air of a buffoon paid for entertaining the company. He, indeed, well deserves his hire."

"Colley Cibber once consulted me as to one of his birth-day Odes, a long time before it was wanted. I objected very freely to several passages. Cibber lost patience, and would not read his ode to an end. When we had done with criticism, we walked over to Richardson's,1 the author of 'Clarissa,' and I wondered to find Richardson displeased that I'did not treat Cibber with more respect.' Now, Sir, to talk of respect for a player!” (smiling disdainfully.) BoswELL: "There, Sir, you are always heretical; you never will allow merit to a player.” JOHNSON: "Merit, Sir; what merit? Do you respect a rope-dancer, or a ballad-singer?” BOSWELL: "No, Sir; but we respect a great player, as a man who can conceive lofty sentiments, and can express them gracefully." JOHNSON: "What, Sir, a fellow who claps a hump on his back, and a lump on his leg, and cries, 'I am Richard the Third ?' Nay, Sir, a ballad-singer is a higher man, for he does two things: he repeats and he sings. There is both recitation and music in his performance; the player only recites." BOSWELL: "My dear Sir, you may turn anything into ridicule. I allow that a player of farce is not entitled to respect; he does a little thing: but he who can represent exalted characters, and touch the noblest passions, has very respectable powers; and mankind have agreed in admiring great talents for the stage. We must consider, too, that a great player does what very few people are capable to do: his art is a very rare faculty. Who can repeat Hamlet's soliloquy, "To be, or not to be,' as Garrick does it ?" JOHNSON: "Anybody may. Jemmy there (a boy about eight years old, who was in the room) will do it as well in a week.” BOSWELL: “No, no, Sir; and as a proof of the merit of great acting, and of the value which mankind set upon it, Garrick has got 100,000l." JOHNSON: "Is getting 100,000l. a proof of excellence? That has been done by a scoundrel commissary."

This was Samuel Richardson, the celebrated novelist; and, as he died in 1761, the incident above related must have taken place some years previously. Richardson was an extraordinary man. He was by trade a printer, and received his education at a common day-school in Derbyshire, where he was born, in 1689. He followed his business in a court in Fleet-street, and resided in Salisbury-square, adjoining. In 1740, he published his "Pamela," the popularity of which was so great, that it passed through five editions in one year. His "Clarissa," his "History of Sir Charles Grandison," and other productions, were also eminently successful. By the interest of Mr. Speaker Onslow, he was appointed printer of "The Journal of the House of Commons; " and in 1754 he was chosen Master of the Stationers' Company. He was an intimate friend of Johnson's; and at his house the latter was a frequent visitor. His" Correspondence "with persons of eminence (with his Life, by Mrs. Barbauld), was published in 1804.--ED,

This was most fallacious reasoning. I was sure, for once, that I had the best side of the argument. I boldly maintained the just distinction between a tragedian and a mere theatrical droll; between those who rouse our terror and pity, and those who only make us laugh. "If," said I, "Betterton and Foote were to walk into this room, you would respect Betterton much more than Foote." JOHNSON: "If Betterton were to walk into this room with Foote, Foote would soon drive him out of it. Foote, Sir, quatenus Foote, has powers superior to them all."

MRS. MACAULAY.

On Monday, September 22, when at breakfast, I unguardedly said to Dr. Johnson, "I wish I saw you and Mrs. Macaulay together." He grew very angry; and, after a pause, while a cloud gathered on his brow, he burst out, "No, Sir, you would not see us quarrel, to make you sport. Don't you know that it is very uncivil to pit two people against one another?"Then, checking himself, and wishing to be more gentle, he added, "I do not say you should be hanged or drowned for this: but it is very uncivil." Dr. Taylor thought him in the wrong, and spoke to him privately of it; but I afterwards acknowledged to Johnson that I was to blame, for I candidly owned, that I meant to express a desire to see a contest between Mrs. Macaulay and him; but then I knew how the contest would end; so that I was to see him in triumph. JOHNSON: "Sir, you cannot be sure how a contest will end; and no man has a right to engage two people in a dispute by which their passions may be inflamed, and they may part with bitter resentment against each other. I would sooner keep company with a man from whom I must guard my pockets, than with a man who contrives to bring me into a dispute with somebody that he may hear it. This is the great fault of (naming one of our friends,) endeavouring to introduce a subject upon which he knows two people in the company differ." BoswELL: "But he told me, Sir, he does it for instruction." JOHNSON: "Whatever the motive be, Sir, the man who does so, does very wrong. He has no more right to instruct himself at such risk, than he has to make two people fight a duel, that he may learn how to defend himself."

He found great fault with a gentleman of our acquaintance for keeping a bad table. "Sir," said he, "when a man is invited to dinner, he is disappointed if he does not get something good. I advised

Mrs. Thrale, who has no card-parties at her house, to give sweetmeats, and such good things, in an evening, as are not commonly given, and she would find company enough come to her: for everybody loves to have things which please the palate put in their way, without trouble or preparation." Such was his attention to the minutiae of life and

manners.

He thus characterised the Duke of Devonshire, grandfather of the present representative of that very respectable family: "He was not a man of superior abilities, but he was a man strictly faithful to his word. If, for instance, he had promised you an acorn, and none had grown that year in his woods, he would not have contented himself with that excuse: he would have sent to Denmark for it. So unconditional was he in keeping his word—so high as to the point of honour." This was a liberal testimony from the Tory Johnson to the virtue of a great Whig nobleman.

Mr. Burke's "Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on the affairs of America," being mentioned, Johnson censured the composition much, and he ridiculed the definition of a free government, viz.-" For any practical purpose, it is what the people think so.""I will let the King of France govern me on those conditions," said he, "for it is to be governed just as I please." And when Dr. Taylor talked of a girl being sent to a parish workhouse, and asked how much she could be obliged to work, "Why," said Johnson, 'as much as is reasonable: and what is that? as much as she thinks reasonable."

66

Dr. Johnson obligingly proposed to carry me to see Ilam, a romantic scene, now belonging to a family of the name of Port, but formerly the seat of the Congreves. I suppose it is well described in some of the tours. Johnson described it distinctly and vividly, at which I could not but express to him my wonder; because, though my eyes, as he observed, were better than his, I could not by any means equal him in representing visible objects. I said, the difference between us in this respect was as that between a man who has a bad instrument, but plays well on it, and a man who has a good instrument, on which he can play very imperfectly.

I recollect a very fine amphitheatre, surrounded with hills covered with woods, and walks neatly formed along the side of a rocky steep, on the quarter next the house, with recesses under projections of rock, overshadowed with trees; in one of which recesses, we are told, Congreve wrote his "Old Bachelor." We viewed a remarkable natural curiosity at Ilam; two rivers bursting near each other from the rock, not from immediate springs, but after having run for many miles under ground. Plott, in his "History of Staffordshire" (p. 69), gives an account of this curiosity; but Johnson would not believe it, though we had the attes

1 Edit. 2, p. 53.-BOSWELL.

tation of the gardener, who said, he had put in corks, where the river Manyfold sinks into the ground, and had caught them in a net, placed before one of the openings where the water bursts out. Indeed such subterraneous courses of water are found in various parts of our globe.1

Talking of Dr. Johnson's unwillingness to believe extraordinary things, I ventured to say, "Sir, you come near Hume's argument against miracles, 'That it is more probable witnesses should lie, or be mistaken, than that they should happen."" JOHNSON: "Why, Sir, Hume, taking the proposition simply, is right. But the Christian revelation is not proved by the miracles alone, but as connected with prophecies, and with the doctrines in confirmation of which the miracles were wrought."

He repeated his observation, that the differences among Christians are really of no consequence. "For instance," said he, “if a Protestant objects to a Papist, 'You worship images;' the Papist can answer, ‘I do not insist on your doing it; you may be a very good Papist without it I do it only as a help to my devotion,' I said, the great article of Christianity is the revelation of immortality. Johnson admitted it was. In the evening, a gentleman-farmer who was on a visit at Dr. Taylor's, attempted to dispute with Johnson in favour of Mungo Campbell, who shot Alexander, Earl of Eglintoune, upon his having fallen when retreating from his Lordship, who he believed was about to seize his gun, as he had threatened to do. He said he should have done just as Campbell did. JOHNSON: "Whoever would do as Campbell did deserves to be hanged; not that I could, as a juryman, have found him legally guilty of murder; but I am glad they found means to convict him." The gentleman-farmer said, "A poor man has as much honour as a rich man, and Campbell had that to defend." Johnson exclaimed, “A poor man has no honour." The English yeoman, not dismayed, proceeded: "Lord Eglintoune was a damned fool to run on upon Campbell, after being warned that Campbell would shoot him if he did." Johnson, who could not bear anything like swearing, angrily replied, “He was not a damned fool: he only thought too well of Campbell. He did not believe Campbell would be such a damned scoundrel, as to do so damned a thing." His emphasis on damned, accompanied with frowning looks, reproved his opponent's want of decorum in his presence.

Talking of the danger of being mortified by rejection, when making approaches to the acquaintance of the great, I observed, “I am, however, generally for trying, 'Nothing venture, nothing have."" JOHNSON: "Very true, Sir; but I have always been more afraid of failing, than hopeful of success." And, indeed, though he had all just respect for rank, no man ever less courted the favour of the great.

1 See Plott's "History of Staffordshire," p. 88, and the authorities referred to by him.— BOSWELL