AN ILLUMINATED MS.
“What do you think of whiskey, Dr. Johnson?” hiccupped Boswell after emptying a sixth tumbler of toddy. “Sir,” said the Doctor, “it penetrates my very soul like ‘the small-still voice of conscience,’ and doubtless the worm of the still is the ‘worm that never dies.’” Boswell afterwards inquired the Doctor’s opinion on illicit distillation, and how the great moralist would act in an affray between the smugglers and the Excise. “If I went by the letter of the law, I should assist the Customs, but according to the spirit I should stand by the contrabands.”
The Doctor was always very satirical on the want of timber in the North. “Sir,” he said to the young Laird of Icombally, who was going to join his regiment, “may Providence preserve you in battle, and especially your nether limbs. You may grow a walking-stick here, but you must import a wooden leg.” At Dunsinane the old prejudice broke out. “Sir,” said he to Boswell, “Macbeth was an idiot; he ought to have known that every wood in Scotland might be carried in a man’s hand. The Scotch, Sir, are like the frogs in the fable: if they had a Log they would make a King of it.”
Boswell one day expatiated at some length on the moral and religious character of his countrymen, and remarked triumphantly that there was a Cathedral at Kirkwall, and the remains of a Bishop’s Palace. “Sir,” said Johnson, “it must have been the poorest of Sees: take your Rum and Egg and Mull altogether, and they won’t provide for a Bishop.”
East India company is the worst of all company. A Lady fresh from Calcutta once endeavoured to curry Johnson’s favour by talking of nothing but howdahs, doolies, and bungalows, till the Doctor took, as usual, to tiffin. “Madam,” said he, in a tone that would have scared a tiger out of a jungle, “India’s very well for a rubber or for a bandana, or for a cake of ink, but what with its Bhurtpore, Pahlumpore, Barrackpore, Hyderapore, Singapore, and Nagpore, its Hyderabad, Astrabad, Bundlebad, Sindbad, and Guzzaratbadbad, it’s a poor and bad country altogether.”
Master M., after plaguing Miss Seward and Dr. Darwin, and a large tea party at Lichfield, said to his mother that he would be good if she would give him an apple. “My dear child,” said the parent, feeling herself in the presence of a great moralist, “you ought not to be good on any consideration of gain, for ‘virtue is its own reward.’ You ought to be good disinterestedly, and without thinking what you are to get for it.” “Madam,” said Dr. Johnson, “you are a fool; would you have the boy good for nothing?”
The same lady once consulted the Doctor on the degree of turpitude to be attached to her son’s robbing an orchard. “Madam,” said Johnson, “it all depends upon the weight of the boy. I remember my schoolfellow Davy Garrick, who was always a little fellow, robbing a dozen of orchards with impunity, but the very first time I climbed up an apple tree, for I was always a heavy boy, the bough broke with me, and it was called a judgment. I suppose that’s why Justice is represented with a pair of scales.”
Caleb Whitefoord, the famous punster, once inquired seriously of Dr. Johnson whether he really considered that a man ought to be transported, like Barrington, the pickpocket, for being guilty of a double meaning. “Sir,” said Johnson, “if a man means well, the more he means the better.”