dinner party one of the guests had not arrived. "Sir," said the host, addressing JOHNSON, "Ought

six people to be kept waiting for one?" "Why, yes," answered he, with a delicate humanity, "if the one will suffer more by your sitting down than the six will do by waiting."

Although JOHNSON at one time could take his glass of port at dinner, and called it “the liquor for men," yet he was no more a connoisseur of that liquor than that individual who said to a friend one evening at supper, that he could not recommend the whisky, but he could the port, for he made it himself. "It had all the necessary qualities; it was black, and it was thick, and it made you drunk.” Of brandy, he said: "It would do soonest for a man what drinking can do for him. And yet, as in all pleasure, hope is a considerable part." "“I know not," said he, "but fruition comes too quick by brandy."

However, for twenty years before he died, JOHNSON was a total abstainer. He was the first of many things; he was the first Parliamentary reporter; he was the first who made literature

stand upon its own merits, without patronage; and he was the first total abstainer.

At dinner one evening, said Boswell to JOHNSON, referring to his abstinence in wine, "Some hosts would not be pleased unless the guests drank with them." "That, sir," answered JOHNSON, "is because they have been accustomed to command, and because the guests are inferior to themselves. Sir, there is no more reason why you should get drunk to please your host, than the host should keep sober to please you. Sir, if a man wants some one to make drunk, he should buy a slave." Spotswood, who was present said: "Wine is the key that opens the box of knowledge." "Nay, sir," said JOHNSON, "it is only the picklock that forces open the box and injures it. A man should accustom himself to obtain confidence in conversation without the stimulus of wine. Wine gives a man 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. One of the disadvantages of wine is,

it makes a man mistake thoughts for words. No sir, wine adds nothing to conversation, and whatever difference it makes is bad, for it shows that it has affected the reason." Said Boswell: "You must allow me, sir, at least, that it produces truth; 'In Vino Veritas,' you know sir." "Why, sir," said JOHNSON, "that may be an argument for drinking, if you suppose men in general to be liars. But, sir, I would not keep company with a fellow who lies as long as he is sober, and whom you must make drunk before you can get a word of truth out of him." "But, sir," said a gentleman, "drinking drives away care and makes us forget whatever is disagreeable. Would not you allow a man to drink for that reason?" JOHNSON: "Yes, sir, if he sat next you. I do not say that wine does not make a man better pleased with himself. Sometimes it does. But the danger is, that while a man grows better pleased with himself, he may be growing less pleasing to others."

An excellent advice of his was, "that a man who has been drinking wine at all freely should

g

never go into a new company. With those who have partaken of wine with him, he may be pretty well in unison; but he will probably be offensive or appear ridiculous to other people." Said Miss Williams, the blind lady, "I wonder, Doctor, what pleasure men can have in making beasts of themselves?" "I wonder, madam,” replied the Doctor, that you have not penetration enough to see the strong inducement to this excess; for he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

Even in Skye, so famous for rain and whiskytoddy, JOHNSON continued a consistent abstainer,and a very staunch one he must have been to have resisted the blandishments of the kind, hospitable Highland chiefs and lairds, all drinking "Toctor Shonson's" health in fierce usquebaugh. But in Skye he retained his resolution. We say resolution, for vow he would never take. He hated a vow. "A vow, sir," said he, "is a horrible thing, it is a snare for sin. The man who cannot go to heaven without a vow, may go to -;" here he made a half-whistling pause. Even the fascination of Lady

Macleod could not entice him to take wine. One

evening at dinner she was anxious to know why he abstained from wine, and ventured to say, "I am

Nay, Says

sure, sir, you would not carry it too far? madam," said JOHNSON, "it carried me." Steevens, "Once, and but once, he is known to have had too much wine- -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." But if JOHNSON did not drink, Boswell did. Like Sir William Temple, who on his travels kept a friend to drink the bumpers, JOHNSON had Boswell to drink the bumpers to the toasts of the Highland lairds. Boswell liked a good drink, and sometimes got winey after the Doctor retired to rest. Indeed, he would sit up to all hours in the morning drinking tartan toddy with the lairds. As the Highlander defined it, one glass of whisky to two glasses of water, makes very good toddy; but one glass of water to one glass of whisky makes “Hieland toddy;" but