He affected to utter this in a whisper; but to see him directly address me, caught the attention of all the table, and every one smiled, though in silence; while I felt so surprised and so foolish! so pleased and so ashamed, that I hardly knew whether he meant my Mr. Macartney, or spoke at random of some other. This, however, he soon put beyond all doubt, by very composedly adding, while contemptuously regarding my imputed parsimony on his plate: “Mr. Macartney, it is true, might have most claim to liberality, poor fellow!—for how, as Tom Brangton shrewdly remarks, should he ever have known what a good dinner was, if he had never come to England?”
Perceiving, I suppose—for it could not be very difficult to discern—the commotion into which this explication put me; and the stifled disposition to a contagious laugh, which was suppressed, not to add to my embarrassment; he quickly, but quietly, went on to a general discourse upon Scotland, descriptive and political; but without point or satire—though I cannot, my dear Mr. Crisp, give you one word of it: not because I have forgotten it—for there is no remembering what we have never heard; but because I could only generally gather the subject. I could not listen to it. I was so confused and perturbed between pleasure and vexation—pleasure, indeed, in the approvance of Dr. Johnson! but vexation, and great vexation to find, by the conscious smirks of all around, that I was betrayed to the whole party! while I had only consented to confiding in Mrs. Thrale; all, no doubt, from a mistaken notion that I had merely meant to feel the pulse of the public, and to avow, or to conceal myself, according to its beatings: when heaven knows—and you, my dear Mr. Crisp, know, that I had not the most distant purpose of braving publicity, under success, any more than under failure.
From Scotland, the talk fell, but I cannot tell how, upon some friend of Dr. Johnson’s, of whom I did not catch the name; so I will call him Mr. Three Stars, * * *; of whom Mr. Seward related some burlesque anecdotes, from which Mr. * * * was warmly vindicated by the Doctor.
“Better say no more, Mr. Seward,” cried Mrs. Thrale, “for Mr. * * * is one of the persons that Mr. Johnson will suffer no one to abuse but himself! Garrick is another: for if any creature but himself says a word against Garrick—Mr. Johnson will brow-beat him in a moment.”
“Why, Madam, as to David,” answered the Doctor, very calmly, ‘it is only because they do not know when to abuse and when to praise him; and I will allow no man to speak any ill of David, that he does not deserve. As to * * *,—why really I believe him to be an honest man, too, at the bottom. But, to be sure, he is rather penurious; and he is somewhat mean; and it must be owned he has some degree of brutality; and is not without a tendency to savageness, that cannot well be defended.’
We all laughed, as he could not help doing himself, at such a curious mode of taking up his friend’s justification. And he then related a trait of another friend who had belonged to some club [27] that the Doctor frequented, who, after the first or second night of his admission, desired, as he eat no supper, to be excused paying his share for the collation.
“And was he excused, Sir?” cried my father.
“Yes, Sir; and very readily. No man is angry with another for being inferior to himself. We all admitted his plea publicly—for the gratification of scorning him privately! For my own part, I was fool enough to constantly pay my share for the wine, which I never tasted. But my poor friend Sir John, it cannot well be denied, was but an unclubbable man.”
How delighted was I to hear this master of languages, this awful, this dreaded lexiphanes, thus sportively and gaily coin burlesque words in social comicality!
I don’t know whether he deigned to watch me, but I caught a glance of his eye that seemed to shew pleasure in perceiving my surprise and diversion, for with increased glee of manner he proceeded.—