eating and drinking around him; but promiscuous hospitality is not the way to gain real influence. You must help some people at table before others; you must ask some people how they like their wine oftener than others: you therefore offend more people than you please. You are like the French statesman, who said, when he granted a favour, J'ai fait dix mécontents et un ingrat. Besides, sir, being entertained ever so well at a man's table impresses no lasting regard or esteem. No, sir, the way to make sure of power and influence is by lending money confidentially to your neighbours at a small interest, or perhaps at no interest at all, and having their bonds in your possession." BOSWELL. "May not a man, sir, employ his riches to advantage in educating young men of merit ?" JOHNSON. "Yes, sir, if they fall in your way: but if it be understood that you patronize young men of merit, you will be harassed with solicitations. You will have numbers forced upon you, who have no merit; some will force them upon you from mistaken partiality, and some from downright interested motives, without a scruple; and you will be disgraced. Were I a rich man, I would propagate all kinds of trees that will grow in the open air. A greenhouse is childish. I would introduce foreign animals into the country; for instance, the reindeer."

Observing some beggars in the street as they walked along, Boswell said to him "I suppose there is no civilized country in the world where the misery of want in the lowest classes of the people is prevented." JOHNSON. "I believe, sir, there is not; but it is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality."

XI.

NATIONS.

OHNSON Scouted the idea of nations having any peculiar characteristics. "There is no permanent natural cha

racter," he said; "it varies according to circumstances. Alexander the Great swept India; now the Turks sweep Greece."

He was of opinion that the English nation cultivated both their soil and their reason better than any other people; but admitted that the French, though not the highest perhaps in any department of literature, yet in. every department were very high. Intellectual pre-eminence, he observed, was the highest superiority; and that every nation derived their highest reputation from the splendour and dignity of their writers. Voltaire, he remarked, was a good narrator, his principal merit consisting in a happy selection and arrangement of circumstances. Speaking of the French novels, as compared with Richardson's, he said they might be pretty baubles-but a wren was not an eagle. In a Latin conversation with the Pere Boscovitch, at the house of Mrs. Cholmondeley, he maintained the superiority of Sir Isaac Newton over all foreign philosophers, with a dignity and eloquence that surprised that learned foreigner.* The rage for everything English that prevailed in France after Lord Chatham's glorious war being mentioned, he said he did not wonder at it; for that we had drubbed those fellows into a proper reverence for us, and that their national petulance required periodical chastisement.

He observed: "The great in France live very magnificently, but the rest very miserably. There is no happy middle state as in England. The shops of Paris are mean; the meat in the

Sir William Jones records that Johnson once remarked in his hearing that, if Newton had flourished in ancient Greece, he would have been worshipped as a divinity.

markets is such as would not be sent to a gaol in England; and Thrale justly observed that the cookery of the French was forced upon them by necessity; for they could not eat their meat unless they added some taste to it. The French are an indelicate ¦ people; they will spit upon any place. At Madam * * * *

a literary lady of rank, the footman took the sugar in his fingers and threw it into my coffee. I was going to put it aside; but hearing it was made on purpose for me, I ev'n tasted Tom's fingers. The same lady would needs make tea à l'Anglaise. The spout of the teapot did not pour freely; she bade the footman blow into it. France is worse than Scotland in everything but climate. Nature has done more for the French; but they have done less for themselves than the Scotch have done."

The poor in England, he held, were better provided for than in any other country of the same extent: he did not mean little cantons, or petty republics. "Where a great proportion of the people," said he, "are suffered to languish in helpless misery, that country must be ill policed, and wretchedly governed. A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation. Gentlemen of education," he observed, "were pretty much the same in all countries; the condition of the lower orders (the poor especially) was the true mark of national discrimination."

Boswell having observed that it was strange how well Scotchmen were known to one another in their own country, though born in very distant counties; whereas the gentlemen of neighbouring counties in England are mutually unknown to each other, Johnson, with his usual acuteness, at once saw and explained the reason of this: "Why, sir, you have Edinburgh, where the gentlemen from all your counties meet, and which is not so large but that they are all known. There is no such common place of collection in England, except London, where, from its great size and diffusion, many of those who reside in contiguous counties of England may long remain unknown to each other."

He defended his remark upon the general insufficiency of education in Scotland, and confirmed to Boswell the authenticity of his witty saying on the learning of the Scotch-"Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no one gets a full meal." "There is," said he, "in Scotland a profusion of learning, a certain portion of it widely and thinly spread. A merchant has as much learning as one of their clergy."

Boswell reminded him that the landlord at Ellon, in Scotland, said that he heard he was the greatest man in England -next to Lord Mansfield. "Ay, sir," said he, "the exception defined the idea. A Scotchman could go no further:

'The force of nature could no farther go."

He remarked that "the Irish mix better with the English than the Scotch do; their language is nearer to English; as a proof of which they succeed very well as players, which Scotchmen do not. Then, sir, they have not that extreme nationality which we find in the Scotch. I will do you, Boswell, the justice. to say that you are the most unscottified of your countrymen. You are almost the only instance of a Scotchman that I have known, who did not, at every other sentence, bring in some other Scotchman."

Dr. Barnard, bishop of Killaloe, having once expressed to him an apprehension that, if he should visit Ireland, he might treat the people of that country more unfavourably than he had done the Scotch; he answered, with strong double-edged wit: "Sir, you have no reason to be afraid of me. The Irish are not in a conspiracy to cheat the world by false representations of the merits of their countrymen. No, sir; the Irish are a fair people. They never speak well of one another."

XII.

LIFE.

D

66

INING at the Mitre, Boswell attempted to argue for the superior happiness of the savage life, upon the usual fanciful topics. JOHNSON. Sir, there can be nothing more false. The savages have no bodily advantages beyond those of civilized men they have not better health; and as to care or mental uneasiness, they are not above it, but below it, like bears. No, sir; you are not to talk such paradox: let me have no more on't. It cannot entertain, far less can it instruct. Lord Monboddo, one of your Scotch judges, talked a great deal of such nonsense: I suffered him, but I will not suffer you." BOSWELL. "6 'But, sir, does not Rousseau talk such nonsense?" JOHNSON. "True, sir; but Rousseau knows he is talking nonsense, and laughs at the world for staring at him." BOSWELL. "How so, sir?" JOHNSON. "Why, sir, a man who talks nonsense so well must know that he is talking nonsense; but I am afraid Monboddo does not know that he is talking nonsense. BOSWELL. “Is it wrong then, sir, to affect singularity, in order to make people stare?" JOHNSON. “Yes, if you do it by propagating error and, indeed, it is wrong in any way. There is in human nature a general inclination to make people stare; and every wise man has himself to cure of it, and does cure himself. If you wish to make people stare by doing better than others, why, make them stare till they stare their eyes out. But consider how easy it is to make people stare by being absurd. I may do it by going into a drawing room without my shoes. You remember the gentleman in the Spectator, who had a commission of lunacy taken out against him for his extreme singularity, such as never wearing a wig, but a nightcap. Now, sir, abstractedly the nightcap was the best; but, relatively, the advantage was overbalanced by his making the boys run after him."