an argument upon some lines of Gray, and upon Pope's definition of wit, in which he was so roughly confuted, and so severely ridiculed, that he was hurt and piqued beyond all power of disguise, and, in the midst of the discourse, suddenly turned from him, and wishing Mrs. Thrale good-night, very abruptly withdrew. Dr. Johnson was certainly right with respect to the argument and to reason; but his opposition was so warm, and his wit so satirical and exulting, that I was really quite grieved to see how unamiable he appeared, and how greatly he made himself dreaded by all, and by many abhorred. What pity that he will not curb the vehemence of his love of victory and superiority!— Madame D'Arblay.

When I called upon Dr. Johnson next morning, I found. him highly satisfied with his colloquial prowess the preceding evening. "Well," said he, "we had good talk." Boswell: "Yes, sir, you tossed and gored several persons.' Boswell.

GENERAL BRUTALITY.

Ar Mr. Tytler's I happened to tell that one evening, a great many years ago, when Dr. Hugh Blair and I were sitting together in the pit of Drury Lane play-house, in a wild freak of youthful extravagance I entertained the audience prodigiously by imitating the lowing of a cow. A little while after I had told this story, I differed from Dr. Johnson, I suppose too confidently, upon some point which I now forget. He did not spare me. "Nay, sir,” said he, "if you cannot talk better as a man, I'd have you bellow like a cow."-Boswell.

One of the gentlemen said he had seen three folio volumes of Dr. Johnson's sayings collected by me. "I must

put you right, sir," said I, "for I am very exact in authenticity. You could not see folio volumes, for I have none: you might have seen some in quarto and octavo. This is an inattention which one should guard against." Johnson: "Sir, it is a want of concern about veracity. He does not know that he saw any volumes. If he had seen them, he could have remembered their size.”—Boswell.

Johnson: "Sheridan is a wonderful admirer of the tragedy of Douglas, and presented its author with a gold medal. Some years ago, at a coffee-house in Oxford, I called to him, 'Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Sheridan, how came you to give a gold medal to Home for writing that foolish play? This, you see, was wanton and insolent; but I meant to be wanton and insolent. A medal has no value but as a stamp of merit. And was Sheridan to assume to himself the right of giving that stamp ?"-Boswell.

Mrs. Thrale told a story of Hannah More which, I think, exceeds in its severity all the severe things I have yet heard of Dr. Johnson's saying. When she was introduced to him, not long ago, she began singing his praise in the warmest manner, and talking of the pleasure and the instruction she had received from his writings with the highest encomiums. For some time he heard her with that quietness which a long use of praise has given him. She then redoubled her strokes, and, as Mr. Seward calls it, peppered still more highly, till at length he turned suddenly to her, with a stern and angry countenance, and said, "Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having.”—Madame D'Arblay.

We dined at Mr. Keith's. Mrs. Keith was rather too attentive to Dr. Johnson, asking him many questions about his drinking only water. He repressed that observation by

saying to me, "You may remember that Lady Errol took no notice of this."-Boswell.

When we were at Rouen, he took a great fancy to the Abbé Rouffette, with whom he conversed about the destruction of the order of Jesuits, and condemned it loudly, as a blow to the general power of the Church, and likely to be followed with many and dangerous innovations which might at length become fatal to religion itself, and shake even the foundation of Christianity. The gentleman seemed to wonder and delight in his conversation. The talk was all in Latin, which both spoke fluently, and Dr. Johnson pronounced a long eulogium upon Milton with so much ardor, eloquence, and ingenuity, that the Abbé rose from his seat and embraced him. My husband, seeing them apparently so charmed with the company of each other, politely invited the Abbé to England, intending to oblige his friend, who, instead of thanking, reprimanded him severely before the man for such a sudden burst of tenderness toward a person he could know nothing at all of; and thus put a sudden finish to all his own and Mr. Thrale's entertainment from the company of the Abbé Rouffette.-Mrs. Piozzi.

A gentleman having, to some of the usual arguments for drinking, added this: "You know, sir, drinking drives away care, and makes us forget whatever is disagreeable. Would you not allow a man to drink for that reason?" Johnson : Yes, sir, if he sat next you."-Boswell.

Johnson's dislike of Mr. Wilkes was so great that it extended even to his connections. He happened to dine one day at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, with a large and distinguished company, among which were Mr. Wilkes's brother Israel and his lady. In the course of conversation, Mr. Israel Wilkes was about to make some remark, when Johnson suddenly stopped him with, "I hope, sir, what you are going to

say may be better worth hearing than what you have already said." This rudeness shocked and spread a gloom over the whole party, particularly as Mr. Israel Wilkes was a gentleman of a very amiable character and of refined taste, and, what Dr. Johnson little suspected, a very loyal subject. -Miss Reynolds.

A question was started, how far people who disagree in a capital point can live in friendship together. Johnson said they might. Goldsmith said they could not, as they had not the idem velle atque idem nolle· -the same likings and the same aversions. Johnson: "Why, sir, you must shun the subject as to which you disagree. For instance, I can live very well with Burke. I love his knowledge, his genius, his diffusion and affluence of conversation; but I would not talk to him of the Rockingham party." Goldsmith: "But, sir, when people live together who have something as to which they disagree, and which they want to shun, they will be in the situation mentioned in the story of Bluebeard: 'You may look into all the chambers but one.' But we should have the greatest inclination to look into that chamber, to talk of that subject." Johnson (with a loud voice): "Sir, I am not saying that you could live in friendship with a man from whom you differ as to some point: I am only saying that I could do it."-Boswell.

In talking Lady Ladd over with Mrs. Thrale, who has a very proper regard for her, but who, I am sure, cannot be blind to her faults, she gave me another proof to those I have already had of the uncontrolled freedom of speech which Dr. Johnson exercises to everybody, and which everybody receives quietly from him. Lady Ladd has been very handsome, but is now, I think, quite ugly. Well, she was a little while ago dressed in so showy a manner as to attract the Doctor's notice; and when he had looked at her some time, he broke out aloud into this quotation:

"With patches, paint, and jewels on,
Sure Phillis is not twenty-one!
But if at night you Phillis see,

The dame at least is forty-three!"

-Madame D'Arblay.

One of Dr. Johnson's rudest speeches was to a pompous gentleman coming out of Lichfield Cathedral, who said, "Dr. Johnson, we have had a most excellent discourse to-day." "That may be," said Johnson, "but it is impossible that you should know it."- Cradock.

Mr. Tyers was very intimate with Johnson, and was one of his earliest visitors in the morning. But though Johnson held him in great esteem, and felt much relief from his conversation and his accounts of public occurrences, yet Mr. Tyers, with all the mildness of his own character, could not escape Johnson's rough asperity. When Mr. Tyers called on him one morning and told him that he had just taken chambers which had been occupied by Sir Fletcher Norton, I wish," said the surly censor, "that you had taken his understanding at the same time."-William Taylor.

Coming home one cool evening in a boat from Greenwich, Boswell suffered from the cold, and gives this account of the way in which Johnson comforted him: "Johnson, whose robust frame was not in the least affected by the cold, scolded me, as if my shivering had been a paltry effeminacy, saying, 'Why do you shiver?' Sir William Scott, of the Commons, told me that when he complained of a headache in the postchaise, as they were travelling together to Scotland, Johnson treated him in the same manner: 'At your age, sir, I had no headache.' Once when he was musing over the fire at Streatham, a young gentleman said to him, "Mr. Johnson, would you advise me to marry?" He answered, "I would advise no man to marry, sir, who is not likely to propagate understanding," and abruptly left the room. When Mrs.