“Sir,” cried Dr. Johnson, after a little pause, “this assertion I believe may be right.” And then, see-sawing a minute or two on his chair, he forcibly added: “All animated nature loves music—except myself!”
Some time later, when Dr. Burney perceived that he was generally gaining ground in the house, he said to Mrs. Thrale, who had civilly been listening to some favourite air that he had been playing: “I have yet hopes, Madam, with the assistance of my pupil, to see your’s become a musical family. Nay, I even hope, Sir,” turning to Dr. Johnson, “I shall some time or other make you, also, sensible of the power of my art.”
“Sir,” answered the Doctor, smiling, “I shall be very glad to have a new sense put into me!”
The Tour to the Hebrides being then in hand, Dr. Burney inquired of what size and form the book would be. “Sir,” he replied, with a little bow, “you are my model!”
Impelled by the same kindness, when the Doctor lamented the disappointment of the public in Hawkesworth’s Voyages,—“Sir,” he cried, “the public is always disappointed in books of travels;—except your’s!”
And afterwards, he said that he had hardly ever read any book quite through in his life; but added: “Chamier and I, Sir, however, read all your travels through;—except, perhaps, the description of the great pipes in the organs of Germany and the Netherlands!—”
Mr. Thrale had lately fitted up a rational, readable, well chosen library. It were superfluous to say that he had neither authors for show, nor bindings for vanity, when it is known, that while it was forming, he placed merely one hundred pounds in Dr. Johnson’s hands for its completion; though such was his liberality, and such his opinion of the wisdom as well as knowledge of Doctor Johnson in literary matters, that he would not for a moment have hesitated to subscribe to the highest estimate that the Doctor might have proposed.
One hundred pounds, according to the expensive habits of the present day, of decorating books like courtiers and coxcombs, rather than like students and philosophers, would scarcely purchase a single row for a book-case of the length of Mr. Thrale’s at Streatham; though, under such guidance as that of Dr. Johnson, to whom all finery seemed foppery, and all foppery futility, that sum, added to the books naturally inherited, or already collected, amply sufficed for the unsophisticated reader, where no peculiar pursuit, or unlimited spirit of research, demanded a collection for reference rather than for instruction and enjoyment.
This was no sooner accomplished, than Mr. Thrale resolved to surmount these treasures for the mind by a similar regale for the eyes, in selecting the persons he most loved to contemplate, from amongst his friends and favourites, to preside over the literature that stood highest in his estimation.
And, that his portrait painter might go hand in hand in judgment with his collector of books, he fixed upon the matchless Sir Joshua Reynolds to add living excellence to dead perfection, by giving him the personal resemblance of the following elected set; every one of which occasionally made a part of the brilliant society of Streatham.