142 Johnson, Boswell, and Croker. ^August, 



" Lord Wellesley tas been so obliging, as to give the editor the following 

 account of the cause of a quarrel between Boswell and Johnson. Boswell, 

 one day at Sir Joshua's table, chose to pronounce a high-flown panegyric on 

 the wits of Queen Anne's reign, and exclaimed, ' How delightful it must have 

 been, to have lived in the society of Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Gay, and Boling- 

 broke ? We have no such society in our days.' Sir Joshua : ' I think Mr. 

 Boswell, you might be satisfied with your great friend's conversation.' John- 

 son : ' Nay, Sir, Boswell is right ; ever^' man wishes for preferment, and if 

 Boswell had lived in those days, he would have obtained promotion.' Sir 

 Joshua : ' How so. Sir r' Johnson : ' Sir, he would have had a high place in 

 the Dimciad.' This anecdote Lord Wellesley heard from Mr. Thomas Syden- 

 ham, w^ho received it from Mr. Knight, on the authority of Sir Joshua Rey- 

 nolds himself." — Croker. 



Here is a sorry joke transmitted through five hands, "all persons of 

 wit and honour ;" a bon mut was never honoured with so flourishing a 

 pedigree before. 



One of the doctor's well-known paradoxes, was his notion of 

 genius :— 



" People are not born with a particular genius, for particular employments or 

 studies, for it would be like saying that a man could see a great way east, but 

 could not west. It is good sense, applied with diligence to what was at first a 

 mere accident, and which, by great application, grew to be called, by the gene- 

 rality of mankind, a particular genius." 



The question ought to have been asked, whether Johnson himself, 

 had the slightest hope to have painted Hke Sir Joshua, or have com- 

 posed like Handel ; why did he himself not write tragedy like Shak- 

 speare ? He took trouble enough in this point at least, yet what is his 

 Irene ? Is IMacbeth the mere work of " good sense, applied with 

 diligence to what was a mere accident ?" nonsense. The truth is, that 

 genius is a peculiar power of certain minds, with which other minds have 

 as little to do, as the man born blind has to the man with eyes. The 

 faculty is exclusive, and however near approaches may be made to its 

 effects, by men of diligent common sense, there is still a stamp which 

 all the diligence in the world cannot give, and that stamp is the work 

 of genius. 



" Johnson's opinion of Sterne. — Sterne, as may be supposed, was no great 

 favourite with Dr. Johnson ; and a lady once ventured to ask him how he liked 

 Yorick's sermons : ' I know nothing about them, madam,' was his reply. But 

 some time afterwards, forgetting himself, he severely censured them, and the 

 lady very aptly retorted. ' I understood }-ou to say. Sir, that you had never 

 read them.' ' No, madam, I did read them, but it was in a stage-coach. I 

 should never have deigned even to look at them had I been at large.' " 



He was not unconscious of his own roughness : — 



" Of later years he grew much more companionable, and I have heard him 

 say that he knew himse'f to be so. ' In my younger days,' he would say, ' it 

 is true, I was much inclined to treat mankind with asperity and contempt : but 

 I found it answered no good end. I thought it wiser and better to take the world 

 as it goes. Besides, as I have advanced in life, I have had more reason to be 

 satisfied with it. Mankind have treated me with more kindness, and of course I 

 have more kindness for them.' " 



But the great man could be deceived in himself, like the rest of man- 

 kind, and one of his blunders was, a notion that no man understood the 

 refinements of politeness better. The following anecdote comes pro- 

 perly from the pen of a lady, ]\Iiss Reynolds : — 



