"Andrew Millar sends his compliments to Mr. Samuel Johnson with the money for the last sheet of the copy of the dictionary, and thanks God he has done with him."
To this rude note the doctor returned the following smart answer:
"Samuel Johnson returns his compliments to Mr. Andrew Millar, and is very glad to find (as he does by his note), that Andrew Millar has the grace to thank God for anything."
—Percy's "Anecdotes."
The Boy Kipling
Rudyard Kipling's keen and sympathetic understanding of all the diversified and picturesque varieties of human nature found in British India, is too well recognized as part of his power to need assertion; but a little anecdote which his mother remembers of his boyhood is not without a pretty allegorical significance. It was at Nasik, on the Dekhan plain, not far from Bombay, when the little fellow, trudging over the ploughed field, with his hand in that of the native husbandman, called back to her in the Hindustani, which was as familiar to him as English, "Good-by, this is my brother!"
—Professor Norton, in a biographical sketch.
Sir Godfrey Kneller
Pope tells the following story about the great portrait painter:
"As I was sitting by Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, whilst he was drawing a picture, he stopped and said: 'I can't do so well as I should do, unless you flatter me a little; pray flatter me, Mr. Pope! you know I love to be flattered.' I was at once willing to try how far his vanity would carry him, and, after considering a picture, which he had just finished, for a good while very attentively, I said to him in French (for he had been talking for some time before in that language): "On lit dans les Écritures Saintes, que le bon Dieu faisoit l'homme aprés son image: mais, je crois, que s'il voudroit faire un autre a présent, qu'il le feroit apres l'image que voilá.' Sir Godfrey turned round and said very gravely, 'Vous avez raison, Mons Pope; par Dieu, je le crois aussi.'"