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cloth or tarnished gilt-leather, the eloquent volumes repose 
for months at a time before their diminished price is charmed 
from the pocket of a wavering purchaser. 
His style, like himself, was ponderous, though forceful and 
masculine. He never condescends to familiarity, and rarely 
to the use of a short word where he can bring in a long one. 
His diction is un variedly majestic whether in the mouth of 
a princess or a waiting- woman, a robber or an orator, a rake 
or a hermit. 
Spoken for the moment, Johnson’s conversation shews 
more vitality than the books he wrote for eternity. To 
surround himself with friends, to sit by the fire and talk, to 
fold his legs and have the matter out, was to him the best 
thing that life could afford. 
Of the Johnsonian circle were Edmund Burke and Sir 
J oshua Reynolds, Goldsmith and Gibbon, the polished 
Beauclerk, David Garrick, the classic Langton and the adoring 
Boswell. In the midst of this brilliant society sat Johnson, 
deep-voiced and slow of utterance, its acknowledged chief. 
His friends he loved to engage in conversation, to argue with, 
flatly to contradict, and dictatorially to set right. In his 
reported conversation he stands forth as a man of vigorous 
and well-stocked mind, of quick imagination and ready wit, 
handling every chance question with authority and ease. 
His methods of discussion were not always irreproachable. 
To be worsted in dispute he could not suffer with equanimity, 
and since his delight in intellectual exercise prompted him 
often to take up a proposition he knew to be false, he was 
driven at times, in the excitement of talking for victory, to 
eke out a deficiency of argument with abuse of his adversary. 
“ There’s no arguing with Johnson,” said Goldsmith, “ for 
if his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt 
end of it.” 
No reference, however slight, to Johnson’s friends must 
omit the vivacious Mrs. Thrale and her solid husband, who 
were introduced to the sage in 1765. For the ensuing sixteen 
years a room was set apart for him both at Thrale’s house 
in Southwark and at his country retreat at Streatham. The 
lady was charmed by Johnson’s flow of speech, the doctor 
by the lady’s flow of spirits. The respectable Thrale was 
flattered by the friendship of the eminent writer, and the 
declining years of the writer were brightened by the comforts 
of good quarters and a generous table. 
