Wit and Wisdom of Samuel Johnson. care of others beyond what duty enjoins, and no duty TEARS are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears. Southwark Election: Works, ix. 304. 'A BOROUGH election once showed me Mr. Johnson's toleration of boisterous mirth. A rough fellow, a hatter by trade, seeing his beaver in a state of decay, seized it suddenly with one hand, and clapping him on the back with the other, "Ah, Master Johnson,” says he, "this is no time to be thinking about hats." "No, no, Sir," replies our Doctor in a cheerful tone, "hats are of no use now, as you say, except to throw up in the air and huzza with,” accompanying his words with the true election halloo.' Piozzi's Anecdotes, p. 214. Sovereignty: IN sovereignty there are no gradations. There may be limited royalty, there may be limited consulship; but there can be no limited government. There must in every society be some power or other from which there is no appeal, which admits no restrictions, which pervades the whole mass of the community, regulates and adjusts all subordination, enacts laws or repeals them, erects or annuls judicatures, 1 A lady whose son was very dangerously ill. extends extends or contracts privileges, exempt itself from question or control, and bounded only by physical necessity. Wit and of Samuel Works, vi. 234. Johnson. Speaking of a man in his own presence: NEVER speak of a man in his own presence. It is always indelicate, and may be offensive. Boswell's Life of Johnson, ii. 472. Speculation: IF there were no other end of life than to find some adequate solace for every day, I know not whether any condition could be preferred to that of the man who involves himself in his own thoughts, and never suffers experience to show him the vanity of speculation; for no sooner are notions reduced to practice, than tranquillity and confidence forsake the breast; every day brings its task, and often without bringing abilities to perform it difficulties embarrass, uncertainty perplexes, opposition retards, censure exasperates, or neglect depresses. We proceed because we have begun; we complete our design that the labour already spent may not be vain: but as expectation gradually dies away, the gay smile of alacrity disappears, we are compelled to implore severer powers and trust the event to patience and constancy. When once our labour has begun, the comfort that enables us to endure it is the prospect of its end; for though in every long work there are some joyous intervals of self-applause, when the attention is recreated by unexpected facility and the imagination soothed by incidental excellencies; yet the toil with which performance struggles after idea is so irksome and disgusting, and so frequent is the necessity of resting below that perfection Wit and Wisdom of Samuel Johnson. which we imagined within our reach, that seldom any man Speculations and practice : Not only our speculations influence our practice, but our practice reciprocally influences our speculations. We not only do what we approve, but there is danger lest in time we come to approve what we do, though for no other reason but that we do it. A man is always desirous of being at peace with himself, and when he cannot reconcile his passions to his conscience he will attempt to reconcile his conscience to his passions; he will find reason for doing what he resolved to do, and rather than not 'walk after his own lusts' will scoff at religion. Works, ix. 472. The stage: IT will be asked how the drama moves if it is not credited. It is credited with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited, whenever it moves, as a just picture of a real original; as representing to the auditor what he would himself feel if he were to do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or to be done. The reflection that strikes the heart is not that the evils before us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be exposed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment; but we rather lament the possibility than suppose the presence of misery, as a mother weeps over her babe when she remembers that death may take it from her. The delight of tragedy proceeds proceeds from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real they would please no more. Wit and of SUCH is the triumphant language with which a critic exults over the misery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly without resistance or reply. It is time, therefore, to tell him by the authority of Shakespeare that he assumes, as an unquestionable principle, a position which, while his breath is forming it into words, his understanding pronounces to be false. It is false that any representation is mistaken for reality; that any dramatic fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a single moment was ever credited. The objection arising from the impossibility of passing the first hour at Alexandria and the next at Rome supposes that, when the play opens, the spectator really imagines himself at Alexandria, and believes that his walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt, and that he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra. Surely he that imagines this may imagine more. He that can take the stage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium. Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation; if the spectator can be once persuaded that his old acquaintance are Alexander and Caesar, that a room illuminated with candles is the plain of Pharsalia, or the bank of Granicus, he is in a state of elevation above the reach of reason or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean poetry may despise the circumscriptions of terrestrial nature. There is no reason why a mind thus wandering in ecstacy should count the clock, or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brain that can make the stage a field. The Johnson. Wit and Wisdom of Samuel Johnson. truth is that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. Works, v. 120. FAMILIAR comedy is often more powerful on the theatre than in the page; imperial tragedy is always less. Ib. v. 122. 'Strutting dignity: HE1 has a kind of strutting dignity, and is tall by walking on tiptoe. Style: Ib. viii. 487. COLLINS affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry. Works, viii. 404. LEVITY of thought naturally produced familiarity of language, and the familiar part of language continues long the same; the dialogue of comedy, when it is transcribed from popular manners and real life, is read from age to age with equal pleasure. The artifices of inversion, by which the established order of words is changed, or of innovation, by which new words or meanings of words are introduced, is practised, not by those who talk to be understood, but by those who write to be admired. Ib. vii. 34. A MOTHER tells her infant that two and two make four; 1 Thomas Gray, in his Odes. the |