that he lost all sense of moral responsibility, and cared as little for men’s feelings as a Napoleon did for their lives. When the battle was over, the Doctor frequently did what no soldier ever did that I have heard tell of, apologized to his victims and drank wine or lemonade with them. It must also be remembered that for the most part his victims sought him out. They came to be tossed and gored. And after all, are they so much to be pitied? They have our sympathy, and the Doctor has our applause. I am not prepared to say, with the simpering fellow with weak legs whom David Copperfield met at Mr. Waterbrook’s dinner-table, that I would sooner be knocked down by a man with blood than picked up by a man without any; but, argumentatively speaking, I think it would be better for a man’s reputation to be knocked down by Dr. Johnson than picked up by Mr. Froude.
Johnson’s claim to be the best of our talkers cannot, on our present materials, be contested. For the most part we have only talk about other talkers. Johnson’s is matter of record. Carlyle no doubt was a great talker—no man talked against talk or broke silence to praise it more eloquently than he, but unfortunately none of it is in evidence. All that is given us
is a sort of Commination Service writ large. We soon weary of it. Man does not live by curses alone.
An unhappier prediction of a boy’s future was surely never made than that of Johnson’s by his cousin, Mr. Cornelius Ford, who said to the infant Samuel, ‘You will make your way the more easily in the world as you are content to dispute no man’s claim to conversation excellence, and they will, therefore, more willingly allow your pretensions as a writer.’ Unfortunate Mr. Ford! The man never breathed whose claim to conversation excellence Dr. Johnson did not dispute on every possible occasion, whilst, just because he was admittedly so good a talker, his pretensions as a writer have been occasionally slighted.
Johnson’s personal character has generally been allowed to stand high. It, however, has not been submitted to recent tests. To be the first to ‘smell a fault’ is the pride of the modern biographer. Boswell’s artless pages afford useful hints not lightly to be disregarded. During some portion of Johnson’s married life he had lodgings, first at Greenwich, afterwards at Hampstead. But he did not always go home o’ nights; sometimes preferring to roam
the streets with that vulgar ruffian Savage, who was certainly no fit company for him. He once actually quarrelled with ‘Tetty,’ who, despite her ridiculous name, was a very sensible woman with a very sharp tongue, and for a season, like stars, they dwelt apart. Of the real merits of this dispute we must resign ourselves to ignorance. The materials for its discussion do not exist; even Croker could not find them. Neither was our great moralist as sound as one would have liked to see him in the matter of the payment of small debts. When he came to die, he remembered several of these outstanding accounts; but what assurance have we that he remembered them all? One sum of £10 he sent across to the honest fellow from whom he had borrowed it, with an apology for his delay; which, since it had extended over a period of twenty years, was not superfluous. I wonder whether he ever repaid Mr. Dilly the guinea he once borrowed of him to give to a very small boy who had just been apprenticed to a printer. If he did not, it was a great shame. That he was indebted to Sir Joshua in a small loan is apparent from the fact that it was one of his three dying requests to that great man that he
should release him from it, as, of course, the most amiable of painters did. The other two requests, it will be remembered, were to read his Bible, and not to use his brush on Sundays. The good Sir Joshua gave the desired promises with a full heart, for these two great men loved one another; but subsequently discovered the Sabbatical restriction not a little irksome, and after a while resumed his former practice, arguing with himself that the Doctor really had no business to extract any such promise. The point is a nice one, and perhaps ere this the two friends have met and discussed it in the Elysian fields. If so, I hope the Doctor, grown ‘angelical,’ kept his temper with the mild shade of Reynolds better than on the historical occasion when he discussed with him the question of ‘strong drinks.’
Against Garrick, Johnson undoubtedly cherished a smouldering grudge, which, however, he never allowed anyone but himself to fan into flame. His pique was natural. Garrick had been his pupil at Edial, near Lichfield; they had come up to town together with an easy united fortune of fourpence—‘current coin o’ the realm.’ Garrick soon had the world at his feet and garnered golden grain. Johnson
became famous too, but remained poor and dingy. Garrick surrounded himself with what only money can buy, good pictures and rare books. Johnson cared nothing for pictures—how should he? he could not see them; but he did care a great deal about books, and the pernickety little player was chary about lending his splendidly bound rarities to his quondam preceptor. Our sympathies in this matter are entirely with Garrick; Johnson was one of the best men that ever lived, but not to lend books to. Like Lady Slattern, he had a ‘most observant thumb.’ But Garrick had no real cause for complaint. Johnson may have soiled his folios and sneered at his trade, but in life Johnson loved Garrick, and in death embalmed his memory in a sentence which can only die with the English language: ‘I am disappointed by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.’
Will it be believed that puny critics have been found to quarrel with this colossal compliment on the poor pretext of its falsehood? Garrick’s death, urge these dullards, could not possibly have eclipsed the gaiety of nations, since he had retired from the stage months