mask in common life, in the intercourse with his friends?" JOHNSON. "Why no, sir. Every body knows you are paid for affecting warmth for your client; and it is, therefore, properly no dissimulation; the moment you come from the bar you resume your usual behaviour. Sir, a man will no more carry the artifice of the bar into the common intercourse of society, than a man who is paid for tumbling upon his hands will continue to tumble upon his hands when he should walk on his feet'."

299

Talking of some of the modern plays, he said, "False Delicacy was totally void of character. He praised Goldsmith's "Good-natured Man;" said it was the best comedy that had appeared since "The Provoked Husband," and that there had not been of late any such character exhibited on the stage as that of Croaker. I observed it was the Suspirius of his Rambler. He said, Goldsmith had owned he had borrowed it from thence. "Sir (continued he), there is all the difference in the world between characters of nature and characters of manners; and there is the difference between the characters of Fielding and those of Richardson. Characters of manners are very entertaining; but they are to be understood, by a more superficial observer, than characters of nature, where a man must dive into the recesses of the human heart."

1 See post, 15th August, 1773, where Johnson has supported the same argument.-J. BOSWELL. [Cicero touches this question more than once, but never with much confidence. "Atqui etiam hoc præceptum officii diligenter tenendum est, ne quem unquam innocentem judicio capitis arcessas; id, enim, sine scelere fieri nullo pacto potest. Nec tamen, ut hoc fugiendum est, ita habendum est religioni, nocentem aliquando, modo ne nefarium impiumque, defendere. Vult hoc multitudo, patitur consuetudo, fert etiam humari as. Judicis est semper in causas verum sequi patroni, nonnunquam verisimile, etiam is minus sit verum, defendere." (De Off. l. 2. c. 14.) We might have expected a less conditional and apologetical defence of his own profession from the great philosophical orator.-ED.]

[By Kelly, the poetical staymaker.- ED.] VOL. II.

E

Hawk.

It always appeared to me that he estimated the compositions of Richardson too highly', and that he had an unreasonable prejudice against Fielding. In comparing those two writers, he used this expression; "that there was as great a difference between them, as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." This was a short and figurative state of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners. But I cannot help being of opinion that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial-plates are brighter. Fielding's characters, though they do not expand themselves so widely in dissertation, are as just pictures of human nature, and I will venture to say, have more striking features, and nicer touches of the pencil; and though Johnson used to quote with approbation a saying of Richardson's, "that the virtues of Fielding's heroes were the vices of a truly good man," I will venture to add that the moral tendency of Fielding's writings, though it does not encourage a strained and rarely possible virtue, is ever favourable to honour and honesty, and cherishes the benevolent and generous affections. He who is as good as Fielding would make him is an amiable member of society, and may be led on, by more regulated instructors, to a higher state of ethical perfection.

[Johnson was inclined, as being personally acp. 217. quainted with Richardson, to favour the opinion of his admirers that he was acquainted with the inmost recesses of the human heart, and had an absolute command over the passions; but he seemed not firm in it, and could at any time be talked into a disap

1

[See ante, vol. i. p. 210, and post, 6th April, 1772.-ED.]

probation of all fictitious relations, of which he would Hawk. frequently say they took no hold of the mind.]

Johnson proceeded: "Even Sir Francis Wronghead is a character of manners, though drawn with great humour." He then repeated, very happily, all Sir Francis's credulous account to Manly of his being with "the great man," and securing a place. I asked him if "The Suspicious Husband" did not furnish a well-drawn character, that of Ranger. JOHNSON. "No, sir; Ranger is just a rake, a mere rake, and a lively young fellow, but no character.".

The great Douglas cause was at this time a very general subject of discussion. I found he had not studied it with much attention, but had only heard parts of it occasionally. He, however, talked of it, and said, "I am of opinion that positive proof of fraud should not be required of the plaintiff, but that the judges should decide according as probability shall appear to preponderate, granting to the defendant the presumption of filiation to be strong in his favour. And I think too, that a good deal of weight should be allowed to the dying declarations, because they were spontaneous. There is a great difference between what is said without our being urged to it, and what is said from a kind of compulsion. If I praise a man's book without being asked my opinion of it, that is honest praise, to which one may trust. But if an authour asks me if I like his book, and I give him something like praise, it must not be taken as my real opinion."

"I have not been troubled for a long time with authours desiring my opinion of their works. I used once to be sadly plagued with a man who wrote verses, but who literally had no other notion of a verse but that it consisted of ten syllables. Lay

p. 217.

Piozzi,

217.

your knife and your fork across your plate, was to

him a verse:

Lay your knife and your fork across your plate.

As he wrote a great number of verses, he sometimes by chance made good ones, though he did not know it.” [Dr. Johnson did not like that his friends should p. 216, bring their manuscripts for him to read, and he liked still less to read them when they were brought: sometimes, however, when he could not refuse he would take the play or poem, or whatever it was, and give the people his opinion from some one page that he had peeped into. A gentleman' carried him his tragedy, which, because he loved the authour, Johnson took, and it lay about our rooms at Streatham some time. "What answer did you give your friend, sir?" asked Mrs. Thrale, after the book had been called for. "I told him," replied he, "that there was too much Tig and Tirry in it." Seeing her laugh most violently, "Why, what wouldst have, child?" said he. "I looked at nothing but the dramatis, and there was Tigranes and Tiridates, or Teribazus, or such stuff. A man can tell but what he knows, and I never got any farther than the first page."]

He renewed his promise of coming to Scotland, and going with me to the Hebrides, but said he would now content himself with seeing one or two of the most curious of them. He said, "Macaulay, who writes the account of St. Kilda, set out with a prejudice against prejudice, and wanted to be a smart modern thinker; and yet affirms for a truth, that when a ship arrives there all the inhabitants are seized with a cold."

Dr. John Campbell, the celebrated writer, took a

[No doubt Mr. Murphy, in whose tragedy of Zenobia, acted in 1768, there are two personages named Tigranes and Teribazus.-ED.]

2 [See ante, 1st July, 1763.-ED.]

great deal of pains to ascertain this fact, and attempted to account for it on physical principles, from the effect of effluvia from human bodies. Johnson,

1772.

1773.

at another time, praised Macaulay for his "magna- 21 Mar. nimity," in asserting this wonderful story, because it was well attested. A lady of Norfolk, by a letter to 2 Oct. my friend Dr. Burney, has favoured me with the following solution: "Now for the explication of this seeming mystery, which is so very obvious as, for that reason, to have escaped the penetration of Dr. Johnson and his friend, as well as that of the authour. Reading the book with my ingenious friend, the late Rev. Mr. Christian of Docking-after ruminating a little, The cause,' says he, is a natural one. situation of St. Kilda renders a north-east wind indispensably necessary before a stranger can land. The wind, not the stranger, occasions an epidemick cold.' If I am not mistaken, Mr. Macaulay is dead; if living, this solution might please him, as I hope it will Mr. Boswell, in return for the many agreeable hours his works have afforded us."

The

Johnson expatiated on the advantages of Oxford for learning. "There is here, sir," said he, “such a progressive emulation. The students are anxious to appear well to their tutors; the tutors are anxious to have their pupils appear well in the college; the colleges are anxious to have their students appear well in the university; and there are excellent rules of discipline in every college. That the rules are sometimes ill observed may be true, but is nothing against the system. The members of an university may, for a season, be unmindful of their duty. I am arguing for the excellency of the institution."

Of Guthrie, he said, "Sir, he is a man of parts. He has no great regular fund of knowledge; but by