gracefully." JOHNSON. "What, sir, a fellow who claps a hump on his back, and a lump on his leg, and cries, I am Richard the Third?' Nay, sir, a ballad-singer is a higher man, for he does two things; he repeats and he sings: there is both recitation and musick in his performance; the player only recites." BOSWELL. "My dear sir! you may turn any thing into ridicule. I allow, that a player of farce is not entitled to respect; he does a little thing: but he who can represent exalted characters, and touch the noblest passions, has very respectable powers; and mankind have agreed in admiring great talents for the stage. We must consider, too, that a great player does what very few are capable to do; his art is a very rare faculty. Who can repeat Hamlet's soliloquy, 'To be, or not to be,' as Garrick does it?" JOHNSON." Any body may. Jemmy, there (a boy about eight years old, who was in the room), will do it as well in a week," BosWELL. "No, no, sir: and as a proof of the merit of great acting, and of the value which mankind set upon it, Garrick has got a hundred thousand pounds." JOHNSON. "Is getting a hundred thousand pounds a proof of excellence? That has been done by a scoundrel commissary."

This was most fallacious reasoning. I was sure, for once, that I had the best side of the argument. I boldly maintained the just distinction between a tragedian and a mere theatrical droll; between those who rouse our terrour and pity, and those who only make us laugh. "If," said I," Betterton and Foote were to walk into this room, you would respect Betterton much more than Foote." JOHNSON. "If Betterton were to walk into this room with Foote, Foote would soon drive him out of it. Foote, sir, quatenùs Foote, has powers superiour to them all.” [The fact was, that Johnson could not see the pas

p. 145.

sions as they rose and chased one another in the Murph. varied features of the expressive face of Garrick. Mr. Murphy remembered being in conversation with Johnson near the side of the scenes, during the tragedy of King Lear: when Garrick came off the stage, he said, "You two talk so loud, you destroy all my feelings." "Prithee," replied Johnson, "do not talk of feelings; Punch has no feelings."]

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On Monday, September 22, when at breakfast, I unguardedly said to Dr. Johnson, " I wish I saw you and Mrs. Macaulay together." He grew very angry; and, after a pause, while a cloud gathered on his brow, he burst out, "No, sir; you would not see us quarrel, to make you sport. Don't you know that it is very uncivil to pit two people against one another?" Then, checking himself, and wishing to be more gentle, he added, “ I do not say you should be hanged or drowned for this; but it is very uncivil." Dr. Taylor thought him in the wrong, and spoke to him privately of it; but I afterwards acknowledged to Johnson that I was to blame, for I candidly owned, that I meant to express a desire to see a contest between Mrs. Macaulay and him; but then I knew how the contest would end; so that I was to see him triumph. JOHNSON. "Sir, you cannot be sure how a contest will end; and no man has a right to engage two people in a dispute by which their passions may be inflamed, and they may part with bitter resentment against each other. I would sooner keep company mpany with a man from whom I must guard my pockets, than with a man who contrives to bring me into a dispute with somebody that he may hear it. This is the great fault of 1 (naming one of

1

[Mr. Langton is, no doubt, meant here, and in the next paragraph. See the affair of the 7th May, 1773 (vol. ii. p. 239 and 323); where the reader will find the cause of Johnson's frequent and fretful recurrence to this complaint.— ED.]

our friends), endeavouring to introduce a subject upon which he knows two people in the company differ." BOSWELL." But he told me, sir, he does it for instruction." JOHNSON. "Whatever the motive be, sir, the man who does so, does very wrong. He has no more right to instruct himself at such risk, than he has to make two people fight a duel, that he may learn how to defend himself."

He found great fault with a gentleman of our acquaintance for keeping a bad table. "Sir," said he, “ when a man is invited to dinner, he is disappointed if he does not get something good. I advised Mrs. Thrale, who has no card-parties at her house, to give sweetmeats, and such good things, in an evening, as are not commonly given, and she would find company enough come to her; for every body loves to have things which please the palate put in Hawk. their way, without trouble or preparation." [And p. 207. of another lady's entertainments, he said, "What signifies going thither? there is neither meat, drink, nor talk."] Such was his attention to the minutiæ of life and manners.

Apoph.

He thus characterised the Duke of Devonshire, grandfather of the present representative of that very respectable family: "He was not a man of superiour abilities, but he was a man strictly faithful to his word. If, for instance, he had promised you an acorn, and none had grown that year in his woods, he would not have contented himself with that excuse he would have sent to Denmark for it. So unconditional was he in keeping his word; so high as to the point of honour." This was a liberal testimony from the tory Johnson to the virtue of a great whig nobleman.

Mr. Burke's "Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on the Affairs of America," being mentioned, Johnson

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censured the composition much, and he ridiculed the definition of a free government, viz. "For any practical purpose, it is what the people thinks so1." will let the King of France govern me on those conditions," said he, " for it is to be governed just as I please." And when Dr. Taylor talked of a girl being sent to a parish workhouse, and asked how much she could be obliged to work, "Why," said Johnson," as much as is reasonable; and what is that? as much as she thinks reasonable."

Dr. Johnson obligingly proposed to carry me to see Ilam, a romantick scene, now belonging to a family of the name of Port, but formerly the seat of the Congreves 2. I suppose it is well described in some of the tours. Johnson described it distinctly and vividly, at which I could not but express to him my wonder; because, though my eyes, as he observed, were better than his, I could not by any means equal him in representing visible objects. I said, the difference between us in this respect was as that between a man who has a bad instrument, but plays well on it, and a man who has a good instrument, on which he can play very imperfectly.

I recollect a very fine amphitheatre, surrounded with hills covered with woods, and walks neatly formed along the side of a rocky steep, on the quarter next the house, with recesses under projections of rock, over-shadowed with trees; in one of which recesses, we were told, Congreve wrote his "Old Bachelor." We viewed a remarkable natural curiosity at Ilam; two rivers bursting near each other

1 Edit. 2, p. 53.—BOSWELL.

2 [This is a mistake. The Ports had been seated at Ilam time out of mind. Congreve had visited that family at Ilam; and his seat, that is, the bench on which he sometimes sat, in the gardens, used to be shown: this, Mr. Bernard Port-one of the ancient family, and now vicar of Ilam-thinks was the cause of Mr. Boswell's error.-ED.]

from the rock, not from immediate springs, but after having run for many miles under ground. Plott, in his " History of Staffordshire 1," gives an account of this curiosity; but Johnson would not believe it, though we had the attestation of the gardener, who said he had put in corks, where the river Many fold sinks into the ground, and had catched them in a net, placed before one of the openings where the water bursts out. Indeed, such subterraneous courses of water are found in various parts of our globe 3.

Talking of Dr. Johnson's unwillingness to believe extraordinary things, I ventured to say, "Sir, you come near Hume's argument against miracles, 'That it is more probable witnesses should lie, or be mistaken, than that they should happen.'" JOHNSON.

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Why, sir, Hume, taking the proposition simply, is right*. But the Christian revelation is not proved by the miracles alone, but as connected with prophecies, and with the doctrines in confirmation of which the miracles were wrought."

He repeated his observation, that the differences among Christians are really of no consequence. “For instance," said he, "if a Protestant objects to a Papist, You worship images;' the Papist can answer, 'I do not insist on your doing it; you may be a very good Papist without it; I do it only as a help to my devotion."" I said, the great article of Christianity

1 Page 89.

2[The gardener at Ilam told the editor that it was Johnson himself who had made this experiment; but there is not the least doubt of the fact. The river sinks suddenly into the earth behind a hill above the valley, and bursts out again in the same direction, and with the same body of water, about four miles below. ED.]

3 See Plott's "History of Staffordshire," p. 88, and the authorities referred to by him.-Boswell.

4 [This is not quite true. It is indeed more probable that one or two interested witnesses should lie, than that a miracle should have happened; but that distant and unconnected witnesses and circumstances should undesignedly concur in evidencing a falsehood-and that falsehood one in itself unnatural would be more miraculous than any miracle in Scripture; and thus by Hume's own argument the balance of probability is in favour of the miracles.-ED.]