Of his dry pleasantry in conversation there are many instances recorded. When one of his acquaintances had introduced him to his brother, at the same time telling him that he would find him become very agreeable after he had been some time in his company, he replied, "Sir, I can wait." To a stupid justice of the peace, who had wearied him with a long account of his having caused four convicts to be condemned to transportation, he answered, "I heartily wish I were a fifth;" a repartee that calls to our mind Horace's answer to the impertinent fellow:
Omnes composui; Felices! mine ego resto.
A physician endeavouring to bring to his recollection that he had been in his company once before, mentioned among other circumstances his having that day worn so fine a coat, that it could not but have attracted his notice. "Sir," said Johnson, "had you been dipped in Pactolus, I should not have noticed you." He could on occasion be more polite and complimentary. When Mrs. Siddons, with whom, in a letter to Mrs. Thrale, he expressed himself highly pleased, paid him a visit, there happened not to be any chair ready for her. "Madam," said he, "you who so often occasion the want of seats to others will the more readily excuse the want of one yourself."
His scholarship was rather various than accurate or profound. Yet Dr. Burney, the younger, supposed him capable of giving a Greek word for almost every English one. Romances were always a favourite kind of reading with him. Felixmarte of Hircania was his regular study during part of a summer which he spent in the country at the parsonage-house of Dr. Percy. On a journey to Derbyshire, when he had in view his Italian expedition, he took with him Il Palermino d'Inghilterra, to refresh his knowledge of the language. To this taste he had been heard to impute his unsettled disposition, and his averseness from the choice of any profession. One of the most singular qualities of his mind was the rapidity with which it was able to seize and master almost any subject, however abstruse or novel, that was offered to its speculation. To this quickness of apprehension was joined an extraordinary power of memory, so that he was able to recall at pleasure most passages of a book, which had once strongly impressed him. In his sixty-fourth year, he attempted to acquire the low Dutch language. He had a perpetual thirst of knowledge; and six months before his death requested Dr. Burney to teach him the scale of music. "Teach me," said Johnson to him, "at least, the alphabet of your language." What he knew, he loved to communicate. According to that description of the stu-[**possibly "student"—rest of word(s) missing in original] in Chaucer,
Gladly would he teach, and gladly learn.
These endowments were accompanied with a copiousness of words, in which it would be difficult to name any writer except Barrow that has surpassed him. Yet his prose style is very far from affording a model that can safely be proposed for our imitation. He seems to exert his powers of intellect and of language indiscriminately, and with equal effort, on the smallest and the most important occasions; and the effect is something similar to that of a Chinese painting, in which, though all the objects separately taken are accurately described, yet the whole is entirely wanting in a proper relief of perspective. What is observed by Milton of the conduct of life, may be applied to composition, "that there is a scale of higher and lower duties," and he who confuses it will infallibly fall short of that proportion which is necessary to excellence no less in matters of taste than of morals.
He was more intent in balancing the period, than in developing the thought or image that was present to his mind. Sometimes we find that he multiplies words without amplifying the sense, and that the ear is gratified at the expense of the understanding. This is more particularly the case in the Ramblers, which being called for at short and stated intervals, were sometimes composed in such haste, that he had not leasure even to read them before they were printed; nor can we wonder at the dissatisfaction he expressed some years afterwards, when he exclaimed that he thought they had been better. In the Idler there is more brevity, and consequently more compression.
When Johnson trusts to his own strong understanding in a matter of which he has the full command, and does not aim at setting it off by futile decorations, he is always respectable, and sometimes great. But when he attempts the ornamental, he is heavy and inelegant; and the awkwardness of his efforts is more perceptible from the hugeness of the body that is put in motion to produce them. He is like the animal whom Milton describes as making sport for our first parents in Paradise—
—Th' unwieldy elephant,
To make them mirth, used all his might.
It is a good beast for carrying a burden or trampling down a foe, but a very indifferent one at a lavolta or a coranto.