238. Praise.

He said to me one day, "Garrick, I hear, complains that I am the only popular author of his time who has exhibited no praise of him in print; but he is mistaken, Akenside has forborne to mention him. Some, indeed, are lavish in their applause of all who come within the compass of their recollection; yet he who praises every body praises nobody; when both scales are equally loaded, neither can preponderate."

239. Matrimony.

He was extremely fond of the company and conversation of women, and had certainly very correct notions as to the basis on which matrimonial connections should be formed. He always advised his friends, when they were about to marry, to unite themselves to a woman of a pious and religious frame of mind. "Fear of the world, and a sense of honour," said he, " may have an effect upon a man's conduct and behaviour: a woman without religion is without the only motive that in general can incite her to do well."

When some one asked him for what he should marry, he replied, "first, for virtue; secondly, for wit; thirdly, for beauty; and fourthly, for money."

240. Pope.

In his interview with Lord Marchmont, he told me, that his first question was, "What kind of a man was Mr. Pope in his conversation?" His lordship answered, "That if the conversation did not take something of an epigrammatic turn, he fell asleep, or perhaps pretended to be so."

241. Allegorical Painting.

Talking with some persons about allegorical painting, he said, "I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I

know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world."

242. A Lad of Parts.

He once told me, that being at the house of a friend, whose son in his school vacation was come home, the father spoke of this child as a lad of pregnant parts, and said that he was well versed in the classics, and acquainted with history, in the study whereof he took great delight. Having this information, Johnson, as a test of the young scholar's attainments, put this question to him: "At what time did the heathen oracles cease?" The boy, not in the least daunted, answered, "At the dissolution of religious houses."

243. War.

He laughed much at Lord Kaimes' opinion that war was a good thing occasionally, as so much valour and virtue were exhibited in it. "A fire," says Johnson, "might as well be thought a good thing; there is the bravery and address of the firemen in extinguishing it; there is much humanity exerted in saving the lives and properties of the poor sufferers; yet," says he, "after all this, who can say a fire is a good thing?

244. Preachers.

Johnson seemed to think it a duty to accept in good part the endeavours of all public instructors, however meanly qualified for the office, and ever to forbear exercising his critical talents on the effusions of men inferior in learning and abilities to himself. Probably he, on such occasions, recollected the quaint distich of Herbert :

"The worst have something good; where all want sense, God takes the text, and preacheth patience."

Of music he said,

without vice."

245. Music.

"It is the only sensual pleasure

246. Tea.

Speaking one day of tea, he said, "What a delightful beverage must that be that pleases all palates at a time when they can take nothing else at breakfast!"

247. Richard Baxter.

Of Baxter he entertained a very high opinion, and often spoke of him to me as a man of great parts, profound learning, and exemplary piety. He said of the office for the communion, drawn up by him and produced at the Savoy conference, that it was one of the first compositions of the ritual kind he had ever seen. ·(1)

248. Voltaire's Charles XII.

"The Life of Charles the Twelfth," by Voltaire, he said was one of the finest pieces of history ever written.

249. Jeremy Taylor.

At times when he was most distressed, I recommended to him the perusal of Bishop Taylor's "Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying," and also his "Ductor Dubitantium." Of the former, though he placed the author at the head of all the divines that have succeeded the fathers, he said, that on the reading thereof, he had found little more than he had brought himself; and, at the mention of the latter, he seemed to shrink.

250. Shenstone.

To some lady who was praising Shenstone's poems very much, and who had an Italian greyhound lying

(1) It is printed at the end of the first volume of Dr. Calamy's Abridgment of Baxter's History of his Life and Times. -H.

by the fire, he said, "Shenstone holds amongst poets the same rank your dog holds amongst dogs he has not the sagacity of the hound, the docility of the spaniel, nor the courage of the bull-dog, yet he is still a pretty fellow."

251. Plague in London · Nathaniel Hodges.

With all that asperity of manners with which he has been charged, and which kept at a distance many who, to my knowledge, would have been glad of an intimacy with him, he possessed the affections of pity and compassion in a most eminent degree. In a mixed company, of which I was one, the conversation turned on the pestilence which raged in London in the year 1665, and gave occasion to Johnson to speak of Dr. Nathaniel Hodges, who, in the height of that calamity, continued in the city, and was almost the only one of his profession that had the courage to oppose the endeavours of his art to the spreading of the contagion. It was the hard fate of this person, a short time after, to die a prisoner for debt in Ludgate. Johnson related this circumstance to us, with the tears ready to start from his eyes, and with great energy said, "Such a man would not have been suffered to perish in these times."

252. Jortin.

He was much pleased with Dr. Jortin's Sermons, the language of which he thought very elegant; but thought his "Life of Erasmus" a dull book.

253. Blackmore.

To a gentleman who expressed himself in disrespectful terms of Blackmore, one of whose poetic bulls he happened just then to recollect, Dr. Johnson answered, "I hope, Sir, a blunder, after you have heard what I shall

relate, will not be reckoned decisive against a poet's reputation. When I was a young man, I translated Addison's Latin poem on the Battle of the Pygmies and the Cranes, and must plead guilty to the following couplet:

"Down from the guardian boughs the nests they flung,
And kill'd the yet unanimated young ·

And yet I trust I am no blockhead.
changed the word kill'd into crush'd."

I afterwards

254. Watts's " Improvement of the Mind." Watts's "Improvement of the Mind" was a very favourite book with him: he used to recommend it, as he also did "Le Dictionnaire Portatif" of Abbé L'Avocat.

255. Kempis, "De Imitatione Christi."

He was, for some time, pleased with Kempis's tract, "De Imitatione Christi ;" but at length laid it aside, saying, "that the main design of it was to promote monastic piety, and inculcate ecclesiastical obedience." One sentiment therein he however greatly applauded, and I find it adopted by Bishop Taylor, who gives it in these words: "It is no great matter to live lovingly with good-natured, with humble, and meek persons; but he that can do so with the froward, with the wilful, and the ignorant, with the peevish and perverse, he only hath true charity. Always remembering, that our true solid peace, the peace of God, consists rather in compliance with others, than in being complied with; in suffering and forbearing, rather than in contention and victory."

256. Dr. Hammond.

He was extremely fond of Dr. Hammond's (1) works,

(1) Henry Hammond, D. D., born in 1605; elected a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1625; canon of Christchurch