“Where there is exaggerated praise every one is set against the character.”
This, I think, would fit some of the exponents of the gushing speech of our modern social day.
“Sir, these are enthusiasts, by rule.”
Yet, very near the time of his decease, how humbly did this great man receive the diffident expression of regard from some person unknown to him, in which he found the sincerity he prized. “Sir, the applause of a single human being is of great consequence.”
“Depend upon it,” said he on one occasion, “if a man talks of his misfortunes, there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him. Where there is pure misery, there is no recourse to the mention of it.”
He must have loved folk of simple bearing: “Sir, he has no grimace, no gesticulation, no burst of admiration on trivial occasions. He never embraces you with an over-acted cordiality.”
Once, on hearing it observed of one of their friends that he was awkward at counting money, “Why, Sir,” he said, “I am likewise awkward at counting money; but then, Sir, the reason is plain: I have had very little money to count.”
Though he used to censure carelessness very strongly, he once owned to Boswell that, just to avoid the trouble of locking up five guineas, he had hid them so well that he had never found them since.
Talking of Gray’s Odes, which he did not care for, he said, “They are forced plants, raised in a hot-bed; they are but cucumbers, after all.” A gentleman present, unluckily for himself said, “Had they been literally cucumbers, they had been better things than odes.”
“Yes, Sir,” said Johnson, “for a hog.”