'I'm tired with waiting for this chemic gold
Which fools us young, and beggars us when old.'

[928] Johnson, speaking of the companions of his college days, said:— 'It was bitterness which they mistook for frolick.' Ante, i. 73.

[929]

'—to thee I call
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name
O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams.'

Milton's Paradise Lost, iv. 35.

[930] Yet there is no doubt that a man may appear very gay in company who is sad at heart. His merriment is like the sound of drums and trumpets in a battle, to drown the groans of the wounded and dying. BOSWELL.

[931] Mme. D'Arblay (Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii. 103) tells how Johnson was one day invited to her father's house at the request of Mr. Greville, 'the finest gentleman about town,' as she earlier described him (ib. i. 25), who desired to make his acquaintance. This 'superb' gentleman was afraid to begin to speak. 'Assuming his most supercilious air of distant superiority he planted himself, immovable as a noble statue, upon the hearth, as if a stranger to the whole set.' Johnson, who 'never spoke till he was spoken to' (ante, in. 307)—this habit the Burneys did not as yet know—'became completely absorbed in silent rumination; very unexpectedly, however, he shewed himself alive to what surrounded him, by one of those singular starts of vision, that made him seem at times, though purblind to things in common, gifted with an eye of instinct for espying any action that he thought merited reprehension; for all at once, looking fixedly on Mr. Greville, who without much self-denial, the night being very cold, kept his station before the chimney-piece, he exclaimed:—"If it were not for depriving the ladies of the fire, I should like to stand upon the hearth myself." A smile gleamed upon every face at this pointed speech. Mr. Greville tried to smile himself, though faintly and scoffingly. He tried also to hold his post; and though for two or three minutes he disdained to move, the awkwardness of a general pause impelled him ere long to glide back to his chair; but he rang the bell with force as he passed it to order his carriage.'

[932] Page 139. BOSWELL.

[933] On this same day Miss Adams wrote to a friend:—'Dr. Johnson, tho' not in good health, is in general very talkative and infinitely agreeable and entertaining.' Pemb. Coll. MSS.

[934] Johnson said 'Milton was a Phidias, &c.' Ante, p. 99, note 1. In his Life of Milton (Works, vii. 119) he writes:—'Milton never learnt the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked the milder excellence of suavity and softness; he was a Lion that had no skill in dandling the kid.'