great risk was, that a man might pass half a lifetime in the courts, and never have an opportunity of showing his abilities."

* **

Sir William Scott, upon the death of Lord Lichfield, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, said to Johnson, "What a pity it is, sir, that you did not follow the profession of the law. You might have been Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, and attained to the dignity of the peerage; and now that the title of Lichfield, your native city, is extinct, you might have had it." Johnson upon this seemed much agitated, and in an angry tone exclaimed,

66

Why will you vex me by suggesting this when it is too late?" This was in 1778, when he was 69.

FOR conversation," Johnson said,

"there must, in the first place, be

knowledge; there must be materials: in

the second place, there must be command of words: in the third place, there must be imagination, to place things in such views as they are not commonly seen in; and in the fourth place, there must be presence of mind, and a resolution that is not to be overcome by failures. This last is an essential requisite; for want of it many people do not excel in conversation. Now I want it; I throw up the game upon losing a trick." Boswell remarked, "I don't know, sir, how this may be; but I am sure you beat other people's cards out of their hands." Johnson did not hear this remark, or, if he did, took no notice of the impertinence.

* **

Though his usual phrase for conversation was talk, yet he made a distinction, for he once told Boswell that "he had dined the day before at a friend's house, with a very pretty company." Being asked if there was

good conversation, he answered, “No, sir; we had talk enough, but no conversation; there was nothing discussed."

EDMUND BURKE.

HE said of Burke that "you could

not stand five minutes with that

man beneath a shed while it rained, but you must be convinced you had been standing with the greatest man you had ever seen."

JUNIUS.

ALKING of the wonderful conceal

TALKIN

ment of the author of the celebrated letters signed Junius, he said, "I should have believed Burke to be Junius, because I know no man but Burke who is capable of writing these letters; but Burke spontaneously denied it to me. The case would have been different had I asked him if he was the author; a man so questioned, as to an anonymous publication, may think he has a right to deny it."

OCEAN.

A GENTLEMAN told Johnson that

a friend, looking into the Dictionary, could not find the word ocean. "Not find ocean?" said the lexicographer, stalking into the library to see if he had possibly made the omission; and then, rapidly turning the leaves, pointed triumphantly to the word:

There, sir; there is ocean! But never mind it, sir; perhaps your friend spells ocean with an s."

AT

DR. PARR.

T the first interview of this learned scholar with Dr. Johnson, they got very warm in an argument. The subject was the liberty of the press. "While Johnson was arguing," says Parr, "I observed that he stamped. Upon this I stamped. Dr. Johnson said, 'Why did you stamp, Dr. Parr?' I replied, 'Sir, because you stamped; and I was resolved not to give you the advantage even of a stamp in the argument.

Parr soon showed the highest esteem and veneration for Johnson, and expressed this in many ways. In recommending to a friend the study of the posthumous volume of the Doctor's Prayers and Meditations, he described. them as "the thoughts which passed through the mind of the wisest and best of men when he communed with his own heart, and poured forth his supplication before the throne of Heaven for mercy and for grace." It was Parr who wrote the Latin epitaph recorded on Johnson's monument in St. Paul's Cathedral.

OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH.

IN Johnson's last illness, he said to his friend Mr. Nicholls, "Take care of your eternal salvation. Remember to observe the Sabbath. Let it never be a day of business, nor wholly a day of dissipation. Let my words have their due weight. They are the words of a dying man." He