81.
[1072] In The Rambler, No. 89, Johnson writes of 'that interchange of thoughts which is practised in free and easy conversation, where suspicion is banished by experience, and emulation by benevolence; where every man speaks with no other restraint than unwillingness to offend, and hears with no other disposition than desire to be pleased.' In The Idler, No. 34, he says 'that companion will be oftenest welcome whose talk flows out with inoffensive copiousness and unenvied insipidity.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Such tattle as filled your last sweet letter prevents one great inconvenience of absence, that of returning home a stranger and an inquirer. The variations of life consist of little things. Important innovations are soon heard, and easily understood. Men that meet to talk of physicks or metaphysicks, or law or history, may be immediately acquainted. We look at each other in silence, only for want of petty talk upon slight occurrences.' Piozzi Letters, i. 354.
[1073] Pr. and Med. p. 138. BOSWELL.
[1074] This line is not, as appears, a quotation, but an abstract of p. 139 of Pr. and Med.
[1075] This is a proverbial sentence. 'Hell,' says Herbert, 'is full of good meanings and wishings.' Jacula Prudentum, p. 11, edit 1651. MALONE.
[1076] Boswell wrote to Temple:--'I have only to tell you, as my divine, that I yesterday received the holy sacrament in St. Paul's Church, and was exalted in piety.' It was in the same letter that he mentioned 'Asiatic multiplicity' (ante p. 352, note 1). Letters of Boswell, p. 189.
[1077]
'Nil admirari, prope res est una, Numici, Solaque, quae possit facere et servare beatum'
Horace, Epis. i. 6. 1.
'Not to admire is all the art I know, To make men happy and keep them so'
Pope's Imitations, adapted from Creech.
[1078]
'We live by Admiration, Hope, and Love; And even as these are well and wisely fixed, In dignity of being we ascend.'
Wordsworth's Works, ed. 1857, vi. 135.
[1079]
'Amoret's as sweet and good, As the most delicious food; Which but tasted does impart Life and gladness to the heart. Sacharissa's beauty's wine, Which to madness does incline; Such a liquor as no brain That is mortal can sustain.'
Waller's Epistles, xii. BOSWELL.
[1080] Not that he would have wished Boswell 'to talk from books.' 'You and I,' he once said to him, 'do not talk from books.' Boswell's Hebrides, Nov. 3, 1773. See post, iii, 108, note 1, for Boswell's want of learning.
[1081] See post, under March 30, 1783.
[1082] Yet he sat to Miss Reynolds, as he tells us, perhaps ten times (post, under June 17, 1783), and 'Miss Reynolds's mind,' he said, 'was very near to purity itself.' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 80. Eight years later Barry, in his Analysis (post, May, 1783, note), said:--'Our females are totally, shamefully, and cruelly neglected in the appropriation of trades and employments.' Barry's Works, ii. 333.
[1083] The four most likely to be mentioned would be, I think, Beauclerk, Garrick, Langton, and Reynolds. On p. 359, Boswell mentions Beauclerk's 'acid manner.'
[1084] In his Dictionary, Johnson defines muddy as cloudy in mind, dull; and quotes The Winter's Tale, act i. sc. 2. Wesley (Journal, ii. 10) writes:--'Honest, muddy M. B. conducted me to his house.' Johnson (post, March 22, 1776), after telling how an acquaintance of his drank, adds, 'not that he gets drunk, for he is a very pious man, but he is always muddy.' It seems at first sight unlikely that he called Reynolds muddy; yet three months earlier he had written:--'Reynolds has taken too much to strong liquor.' Ante, p. 292, note 5.
[1085] In The Rambler, No. 72, Johnson defines good-humour as 'a habit of being pleased; a constant and perennial softness of manner, easiness of approach, and suavity of disposition.'
[1086] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 17, 1773.
[1087] 'It is with their learning as with provisions in a besieged town, every one has a mouthful, and no one a bellyful.' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 200.
[1088] 'Men bred in the Universities of Scotland cannot be expected to be often decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition, but they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge between learning and ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which is, I believe, very widely diffused among them.' Johnson's Works, ix. 158. Lord Shelburne said that the Earl of Bute had 'a great deal of superficial knowledge, such as is commonly to be met with in France and Scotland, chiefly upon matters of natural philosophy, mines, fossils, a smattering of mechanics, a little metaphysics, and a very false taste in everything.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, i. 139. 'A gentleman who had heard that Bentley was born in the north, said to Porson: "Wasn't he a Scotchman?" "No, Sir," replied Porson, "Bentley was a great Greek scholar."' Rogers's Table Talk, p. 322.
[1089] Walton did not retire from business till 1643. But in 1664, Dr. King, Bishop of Chichester, in a letter prefixed to his Lives, mentions his having been familiarly acquainted with him for forty years; and in 1631 he was so intimate with Dr.