console me by saying, 'Don't be uneasy. I can see he likes you very well.'"

A week afterwards Boswell ventured to call upon the Doctor at his own house, No. 1, Inner Temple-lane, and there he "found the Giant in his den." "He received me very courteously," says Boswell; "but, it must be confessed, that his apartment, and furniture, and morning dress, were sufficiently uncouth. His brown suit of clothes looked very rusty; he had on a little old shrivelled unpowdered wig, which was too small for his head; his shirt-neck and knees of his breeches were loose; his black worsted stockings ill drawn up; and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers. But all these slovenly particularities were forgotten the moment he began to talk. Some gentlemen, whom I do not recollect, were sitting with him; and when they went away, I also rose; but he said to me, 'Nay, don't go.'-'Sir,' said I, 'I am afraid that I intrude upon you. It is benevolent to allow me to sit and hear you.' He seemed pleased with the compliment, which I sincerely paid him, and answered, 'Sir, I am obliged to any man who visits me.' I have preserved the following short minute of what passed this day :—

"Madness frequently discovers itself merely by unnecessary deviation from the usual modes of the world. My poor friend Smart showed the disturbance of his mind by falling upon his knees, and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place. Now, although, rationally speaking, it is greater madness not to pray at all, than to pray as Smart did, I am afraid there are so many who do not pray, that their understanding is not called in question.'

"Concerning this unfortunate poet, Christopher Smart, who was confined in a madhouse, he had, at another time, the following conversation with Dr. Burney.-BURNEY: How does poor Smart do, Sir is he likely to recover?'—JOHNSON: 'It seems as if his mind had ceased to struggle with the disease: for he grows fat upon it.'-BURNEY:- Perhaps, Sir, that may be from want of exercise.'-JOHNSON: 'No, Sir; he has partly as much exercise as he used to have, for he digs in the garden. Indeed, before his confinement, he used for exercise to walk to the alehouse;

but he was carried back again. I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge was, that he did not love clean linen: and I have no passion for it.'

"Johnson continued: 'Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labour; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.'

"The morality of an action depends on the motive from which we act. If I fling half-a-crown to a beggar, with intention to break his head, and he picks it up and buys victuals with it, the physical effect is good; but, with respect to me, the action is very wrong. So religious exercises, if not performed with an intention to please God, avail us nothing. As our Saviour says of those who perform them from other motives, "Verily they have their reward.'"

"When I rose a second time he again pressed me to stay, which I did.

"He told me, that he generally went abroad at four in the afternoon, and seldom came home till two in the morning. I took the liberty to ask if he did not think it wrong to live thus, and not make more use of his great talents. He owned it was a bad habit. On reviewing, at the distance of many years, my journal of this period, I wonder how, at my first visit, I ventured to talk to him so freely, and that he bore it with so much indulgence.

"Before we parted, he was so good as to promise to favour me with his company one evening at my lodgings; and as I took my leave, shook me cordially by the hand. It is almost needless to add, that I felt no little elation at having now so happily established an acquaintance of which I had been so long ambitious."

One may wish that Boswell had been a little more dignified in his approaches to the great man; that he had worshipped standing erect in the full consciousness of being himself a man: that he had not prostrated himself in the dust, Eastern-wise, as an expression of his admiration and reverence; that he had never written a sentence like that, even though he felt its truth,-" It is benevolent to

allow me to sit and hear you." All these are legitimate wishes ; but perhaps it is not legitimate to say, as some have said, that it would have been better and healthier for the world to have wanted all that Boswell has recorded of his hero, than to see through the whole of it the picture of Boswell himself. Still, there should now be no mincing of the fact, that the life of a great man may be well written-best written by one who stands face to face with him, and does not lie at his feet. There were few companies then in which Samuel Johnson's natural kingship was not readily recognised, and there are not many now in which it would be denied; but it is surely possible to pay all due allegiance to a king without ignoring this other great truth :—

"A man's a man for a' that."

CONVERSATIONS.

109

CHAPTER XII.

CONVERSATIONS-AT TEA WITH MRS. WILLIAMS.

(1763.)

Now that Boswell is here to take copious notes of everything that falls from the Doctor's lips, we shall not want for examples of Johnson's conversational powers from this time forward. Without attempting to criticise in any elaborate way our Author's talk, we would simply beg the reader to mark its point, its pith, its precision, its practicality. Whatever his subject may be, and from whatever point of view he may look at it, this man always sees something sharp, clear, and distinctly defined. In his conversations there stands out always an able and honest man, who knows what he says, and says only what he knows. If, also, he is a little too conscious of his greatness in this respect, and occasionally bullies his opponents, can we not pardon him? That is surely not the best talk which is most plentifully larded with apologetic clauses: "by your leave," "with your permission," "if one may say so without offence." Johnson's talk is entirely free from anything of this kind. It may be worth mentioning, also, that Johnson himself would sometimes distinguish between conversation and talk. He was once asked if there had been good conversation at a certain house where he had been dining. JOHNSON: "No, Sir; we had talk enough, but no conversation; there was nothing discussed."

On Saturday, June 25th, when Boswell was dining at an eatinghouse in Butcher-row, Johnson happened to drop in and take a seat at another table. Our Author probably said little until his appetite was satisfied, but he then got into a violent dispute with an Irish gentleman about the cause of the black colour of Negroes. "Why, Sir," said Johnson, "it has been accounted for in three

ways either by supposing that they are the posterity of Ham, who was cursed, or that God had created two kinds of men, one black and another white, or that, by the heat of the sun, the skin is scorched, and so acquires a sooty hue. This matter has been much canvassed among naturalists, but has never been brought to any certain issue." The rest of the debate has not been preserved; but the Irishman got very much heated in the course of it, and used language stronger than seemed to suit the taste of our Author, who at length rose and walked quietly away. In great wrath the Irishman shot after him this withering arrow, "He. has a most ungainly figure, and an affectation of pomposity unworthy of a man of genius." Boswell followed the retiring disputant, who had not observed him when he entered the room; and it was agreed that they should meet in the evening at the Mitre Tavern, one of Johnson's favourite haunts. They came together, therefore, according to appointment; had a good supper, a good talk, and some good port wine to give the whole a flavour.

Speaking of the poet Gray, the Doctor said: "Sir, I do not think Gray a first-rate poet. He has not a bold imagination, nor much command of words. The obscurity in which he has involved himself will not persuade us that he is sublime. His Elegy in a Churchyard' has a happy selection of images, but I don't like what are called his great things. His Ode which begins,

'Ruin seize thee, ruthless King,
Confusion on thy banners wait!

has been celebrated for its abruptness, and plunging into the subject all at once. But such arts as these have no merit, unless when they are original. We admire them only once; and this abruptness has nothing new in it. We have had it often before. Nay, we have had it in the old song of Johnny Armstrong:

'Is there ever a man in all Scotland,

From the highest estate to the lowest degree,' &c.