[905] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 20, 1773. According to Mrs. Piozzi 'he liked the expression so well that he often repeated it.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 208. He wrote to her:--'Have you not observed in all our conversations that my genius is always in extremes; that I am very noisy or very silent; very gloomy or very merry; very sour or very kind?' Piozzi Letters, ii. 166. In Mme. D'Arblay's Diary (ii. 310) we read that 'Dr. Johnson is never his best when there is nobody to draw him out;' and in her Memoirs of Dr. Burney (ii. 107) she adds that 'the masterly manner in which, as soon as any topic was started, he seized it in all its bearings, had so much the air of belonging to the leader of the discourse, that this singularity was unsuspected save by the experienced observation of long years of acquaintance.' Malone wrote in 1783:--'I have always found him very communicative; ready to give his opinion on any subject that was mentioned. He seldom, however, starts a subject himself; but it is very easy to lead him into one.' Prior's Malone, p. 92. What Dugald Stewart says of Adam Smith (Life, p. 114) was equally true of Johnson:--'He was scarcely ever known to start a new topic himself, or to appear unprepared upon those topics that were introduced by others.' Johnson, in his long fits of silence, was perhaps like Cowper, but when aroused he was altogether unlike. Cowper says of himself:--'The effect of such continual listening to the language of a heart hopeless and deserted is that I can never give much more than half my attention to what is started by others, and very rarely start anything myself.' Southey's Cowper, v. 10.
[906] In summer 1792, additional and more expensive decorations having been introduced, the price of admission was raised to two shillings. I cannot approve of this. The company may be more select; but a number of the honest commonalty are, I fear, excluded from sharing in elegant and innocent entertainment. An attempt to abolish the one-shilling gallery at the playhouse has been very properly counteracted. BOSWELL.
[907] Regale, as a noun, is not in Johnson's Dictionary. It was a favourite word with Miss Burney.
[908] 'Tyers is described in The Idler, No. 48, under the name of Tom Restless; "a circumstance," says Mr. Nichols, "pointed out to me by Dr. Johnson himself."' Lit. Anec. viii. 81. 'When Tom Restless rises he goes into a coffee-house, where he creeps so near to men whom he takes to be reasoners, as to hear their discourse, and endeavours to remember something which, when it has been strained through Tom's head, is so near to nothing, that what it once was cannot be discovered. This he carries round from friend to friend through a circle of visits, till, hearing what each says upon the question, he becomes able at dinner to say a little himself; and as every great genius relaxes himself among his inferiors, meets with some who wonder how so young a man can talk so wisely.'
[909] 'That accurate judge of human life, Dr. Johnson, has often been heard by me to observe, that it was the greatest misfortune which could befall a man to have been bred to no profession, and pathetically to regret that this misfortune was his own.' More's Practical Piety, p. 313. MARKLAND.
[910] He had wished to study it. See ante, i. 134.
[911] The fourth Earl of Lichfield, the Chancellor of Oxford, died in 1772. The title became extinct in 1776, on the death of the fifth earl. The present title was created in 1831. Courthope's Hist. Peerage, p. 286.
[912] See post, March 23, 1783, where Boswell vexed him in much the same way.
[913] I am not entirely without suspicion that Johnson may have felt a little momentary envy; for no man loved the good things of this life better than he did; and he could not but be conscious that he deserved a much larger share of them, than he ever had. I attempted in a newspaper to comment on the above passage, in the manner of Warburton, who must be allowed to have shewn uncommon ingenuity, in giving to any authour's text whatever meaning he chose it should carry. [Ante, ii. 37, note 1.] As this imitation may amuse my readers, I shall here introduce it:--
'No saying of Dr. Johnson's has been more misunderstood than his applying to Mr. Burke when he first saw him at his fine place at Beaconsfield, Non equidem invideo; miror magis. These two celebrated men had been friends for many years before Mr. Burke entered on his parliamentary career. They were both writers, both members of THE LITERARY CLUB; when, therefore, Dr. Johnson saw Mr. Burke in a situation so much more splendid than that to which he himself had attained, he did not mean to express that he thought it a disproportionate prosperity; but while he, as a philosopher, asserted an exemption from envy, non equidem invideo, he went on in the words of the poet miror magis; thereby signifying, either that he was occupied in admiring what he was glad to see; or, perhaps, that considering the general lot of men of superiour abilities, he wondered that Fortune, who is represented as blind, should, in this instance, have been so just.' BOSWELL.