You, who perhaps are forty-eight, Encouraged thus to mend my faults, Then come, my friends, and try your skill: (My books are at a distance); Dear knight of Plympton, teach me how And smile serene as thine, The jest uncouth and truth severe; Thou say'st not only skill is gain'd, Thy temper mild, thy genius fine, Thy art of pleasing teach me, Garrick, A second time read o'er; Oh! could we read thee backwards, too, If I have thoughts and can't express 'em, Let Johnson teach me to how place Copy his free and easy style, -833. TALKING on the subject of scepticism, Johnson said, "The eyes of the mind are like the eyes of the body; they can see only at such a distance: but because we cannot see beyond this point, is there nothing beyond it?" Some person advanced that a lively imagination disqualified the mind from fixing steadily upon objects which required serious and minute investigation.-Johnson. "It is true, sir; a vivacious, quick imagination does sometimes give a confused idea of things, aud which do not fix deep, though, at the same time, he has a capacity to fix them in his memory, if he would endeavour at it. It being like a man that, when he is running, does not make observations on what he meets with, and consequently is not impressed by them; but he has, nevertheless, the power of stopping and informing himself. I SHALL never forget the impression I felt in Dr. Johnson's favour, the first time I was in his company, on his saying that as he returned to his lodgings, at one or two o'clock in the morning, he often saw poor children asleep on thresholds and stalls, and that he used to put pennies into their hands to buy them a breakfast. [And this at a time when he himself was living on pennies!-Croker.] When repeating to me one day Grainger's "Ode on Solitude," I shall never forget the concordance of the sound of his voice with the grandeur of those images; nor, indeed, the Gothic dignity of his aspect, his look, and manner, when repeating sublime passages. But what was very remarkable, though his cadence in reading poetry was so judiciously emphatical as to give additional force to the words uttered, yet, in reading prose, particularly on common or familiar subjects, narratives, essays, letters, &c., nothing could be more injudicious than his manner, beginning every period with a pompous accent, and reading it with a whine, or with a kind of spasmodic struggle for utterance; and this, not from any natural infirmity, but from a strange singularity in reading on in one breath, as if he had made a resolution not to respire till he had closed the sentence. I believe no one has described his extraordinary gestures or antics with his hands and feet, particularly when passing over the threshold of a door, or rather before he would venture to pass any doorway. On entering Sir Joshua's house with poor Mrs. Williams, a blind lady who lived with him, he would quit her hand, or else whirl her about on the steps as he whirled and twisted about to perform his gesticulations; and as soon as he had finished he would give a sudden spring, and make such an extensive stride over the threshold, as if he was trying for a wager how far he could stride, Mrs. Williams standing groping about outside the door, unless the servant took hold of her hand to conduct her in, leaving Dr. Johnson to perform at the parlour-door much the same exercise over again. But it was not only at the entrance of a door that he exhibited such strange manœuvres, but across a room or in the street with company he has stopped on a sudden, as if he had recollected his task, and began to perform it there, gathering a mob round him; and when he had finished would basten to his companion (who probably had walked on before) with an air of great satisfaction that he had done his duty. Dr. Johnson was very ambitious of excelling in common acquirements, as well as the uncommon, and particularly in feats of activity. One day, as he was walking in Gunisbury Park (or Paddock) with some gentlemen and ladies who were admiring the extraordinary size of some of the trees, one of the gentlemen remarked that, when he was a boy, he made nothing of climbing (swarming, I think, was the phrase) the largest there. "Why, I can swarm it now," replied Dr. Johnson, which excited a hearty laugh-(he was then between fifty and sixty); on which he ran to the tree, clung round the trunk, and ascended to the branches, and, I believe, would have gone in amongst them, had he not been very earnestly entreated to descend; and down he came with a triumphant air, seeming to make nothing of it. At another time, at a gentleman's seat in Devonshire, as he and some company were sitting in a saloon, before which was a spacious lawn, it was remarked as a very proper place for running a race. A young lady present boasted that she could outrun any person; on which Dr. Johnson rose up and said, "Madam, you cannot outrun me;" and going out on the lawn, they started. The lady at first had the advantage; but Dr. Johnson happening to have slippers on much too small for his feet, kicked them off up into the air, and ran a great length without them, leaving the lady far behind him; and, having won the victory, he returned, leading her by the hand, with looks of high exultation and delight. One Sunday morning, as I was walking with him in Twick enham meadows, he began his antics both with his feet and hands with the latter as if he was holding the reins of a horse like a jockey on full speed. But to describe the strange positions of his feet is a difficult task: sometimes he would make the back part of his heels to touch, sometimes his toes, as if he was aiming at making the form of a triangle, at least the two sides of one. Though indeed, whether these were his gestures on these particular occasion in Twickenham meadows I do not recollect, it is so long since; but I well remember that they were so extraordinary that men, women, and children gathered round him, laughing. At last we sat down on some logs of wood by the river side, and they nearly dispersed; when he pulled out of his pocket, Grotius' De Veritate Religionis," over which he see-sawed at such a violent rate as to excite the curiosity of some people at a distance to come and see what was the matter with him. We drank tea that afternoon at Sir John Hawkins', and on our return I was surprised to hear Dr. Johnson's minute criticism on Lady Hawkins' dress, with almost every part of which he found fault. It was amazing, so short-sighted as he was, how very observant he was of appearances in dress and behaviour, nay, even of the deportment of servants while waiting at table. One day, as his man Frank was attending at Sir Joshua Reynolds' table, he observed, with some emotion, that he had placed the salver under his arm. Nor would the conduct of the companyblind as he was to his own many and strange peculiarities escape his animadversions on some occasions. He thought the use of water-glasses a strange perversion of the idea of refinement, and had a great dislike to the use of a pocket-handkerchief at meals, when, if he happened to have occasion for one, he would rise from his chair and go to some distance, with his back to the company, and perform the operation as silently as possible. Few people, I have heard him say, understood the art of carving better than himself; but that it would be highly indecorous in him to attempt it in company, being so near-sighted, that it required a suspension of his breath during the operation. It must be owned, indeed, that it was to be regretted that he did not practise a little of that delicacy in eating, for he appeared to want breath more at that time than usual. It is certain that he did not appear to the best advantage at the hour of repast; but of this he was perfectly unconscious-owing probably to his being totally ignorant of the characteristic expressions of the human countenance, and therefore he could have no conception that his own expressed, when most pleased, anything displeasing to others; for though, when particularly directing his attention towards any object to spy out defects or perfections, he generally succeeded better than most men-partly perhaps, from a desire to excite admiration of his perspicacity, of which he was not a little ambitious -yet I have heard him say, and I have often perceived, that he could not distinguish any man's face half a yard distant from him, not even his most intimate acquaintance. [This notorious blindness and equally notorious "perspicacity" is an enigms very difficult to solve-particularly as Johnson never helped his defective vision with glasses.-Croker.] Under such disadvantages, it was not much to be wondered at that Dr. Johnson should have committed many blunders and absurdities, and excited surprise and resentment in company: one in particular I remember. Being in company with Mr. Garrick and some others who were unknown to Dr. Johnson, he was saying something tending to the disparagement of the character or of the works of a gentleman present-I have forgot who; on which Mr. Garrick touched his foot under the table; but he still went on, and Garrick, much alarmed, touched him a second time, and, I believe, the third; at last Johnson exclaimed, “David, David, is it you? What makes you tread on my toes so ?" This little anecdote, perhaps, indicates as much the want of prudence in Dr. Johnson as the want of sight. But had he at first seen Garrick's expressive countenance, and (probably) the embarrassment of the rest of the company on the occasion, it doubtless would not have happened. Though it cannot be said that he was "in manners gentle," yet it justly can that he was "in affections mild,” benevolent, and compassionate; and to this combination of character may, I believe, be ascribed, in a great measure, his extraordinary celebrity-his being beheld as a phenomenon or wonder of the age. And yet Dr. Johnson's character, singular as it certainly was from the contrast of his mentai endowments with the roughness of his manners, was, I believe, perfectly natural and consistent throughout; and to those who were intimately acquainted with him must, I imagine, have appeared so. For, being totally devoid of all deceit, free from every tinge of affectation, and unwarped by any vice, his singularities, those strong lights and shades that so peculiarly distinguish his character, may the more easily be traced to their primary and natural causes.-834. PASSING on, we came to an urn which I had erected to the memory of a deceased friend. I asked him how he liked that |
