JOHNSON'S SCALE OF LIQUORS.

359

While Johnson read, the author kept writhing in his chair, grinning with anxiety to hear the expected words of praise, and exclaiming at intervals, in a keen sharp tone of voice: "Is that poetry, Sir? Is it Pindar?"

JOHNSON: "Why, Sir, there is here a great deal of what is called poetry."-POET [to Boswell]: "My muse has not been long upon the town, and (pointing to the Ode) it trembles under the hand of the great critic." Johnson proceeded, "Here is an error, Sir; you have made Genius feminine." "Palpable, Sir," cried the enthusiast; "I know it. But (in a lower tone) it was to pay a compliment to the Duchess of Devonshire, with which her Grace was pleased. She is walking across Coxheath, in the military uniform, and I suppose her to be the Genius of Britain."-JOHNSON: "Sir, you are giving a reason for it; but that will not make it right. You may have a reason why two and two should make five; but they will still make but four."

This is as good as a play; and we have given it both for its own sweet sake and as a typical specimen of what took place again and again in Johnson's life.

One evening about this time, Johnson declaimed upon the qualities of different liquors, speaking with contempt of claret, as being so weak that "a man would be drowned with it before it made him drunk." Having been persuaded to drink one glass of it by way of test, he shook his head and said, "Poor stuff! No, Sir, claret is the liquor for boys; port for men but he who aspires to be a hero (smiling) must drink brandy. In the first place, the flavour of brandy is most grateful to the palate; and then brandy will do soonest for a man what drinking can do for him. There are, indeed, few who are able to drink brandy. That is a power rather to be wished for than attained. And yet as in all pleasure hope is a considerable part, I know not but fruition comes too quick by brandy. Florence . wine I think the worst; it is wine only to the eye; it is wine neither while you are drinking it, nor after you have drunk it it neither pleases the taste, nor exhilarates the spirits."

:

Boswell here reminded the Doctor how they two used to drink

360

QUARREL WITH BEAUCLERK.

wine together, and how he (Boswell) invariably had a head-ache as the issue of their gentle orgies.

JOHNSON: "Nay, Sir, it was not the wine that made your head ache, but the sense that I put into it."-BOSWELL: "What, Sir, will sense make the head ache?"-JOHNSON: "Yes, Sir [with a smile], when it is not used to it." But this hit did not hurt; for Fun stood laughing by.

It was not so, however, with our old acquaintance Beauclerk and the Doctor, nine days after this. He and Johnson were dining with some other friends, when, in the course of the evening, the talk turned upon a Mr. Hackman, who, in a fit of mad jealousy, had shot a Miss Ray, the favourite of a nobleman. It seems the murderer had been provided with two pistols, a fact from which Johnson inferred, as Judge Blackstone had done, that he must have meant to shoot two persons. Mr. Beauclerk said, "No; for that every wise man who intended to shoot himself took two pistols, that he might be sure of doing it at once. Lord 's cook shot himself with one pistol, and lived ten days in great agony. Mr., who loved buttered muffins, but durst not eat them because they disagreed with his stomach, resolved to shoot himself; and then he ate three buttered muffins for breakfast, before shooting himself, knowing that he should not be troubled with indigestion: he had two charged pistols; one was found lying charged upon the table by him, after he had shot himself with the other." "Well," said Johnson, with an air of triumph, "you see here one pistol was sufficient." Beauclerk replied smartly, "Because it happened to kill him. This is what you don't know, and I do."

No more passed just then dinner went on briskly, and the glasses went round merrily, as before.

JOHNSON [suddenly and abruptly]: "Mr. Beauclerk, how came you to talk so petulantly to me, as, 'This is what you don't know, but what I know?' One thing I know, which you don't seem to know, that you are very uncivil.”—BEAUCLERK: "Because you began by being uncivil (which you always are)."

Johnson had not heard the last clause of Beauclerk's retort, and silence again ensued. The Doctor was angry, but he would take

RECONCILIATION.
CONCILIA:

361

time to consider whether he should give his wrath full swing. At length his will decided, and in the affirmative. There were present a young lord and a distinguished traveller, two men of the world with whom he had never dined before; and he must not allow himself to be lowered in their eyes-" he would not appear a coward" before men like these. So he lay in wait, ready to spring upon poor Beauclerk whenever opportunity offered. And he had not long to watch. The conversation soon turned upon Hackman's violence of temper.

JOHNSON: "It was his business to command his temper, as my friend Mr. Beauclerk should have done some time ago."-BEAUCLERK "I should learn of you, Sir."-JOHNSON: "Sir, you have given me opportunities enough of learning, when I have been in your company. No man loves to be treated with contempt."BEAUCLERK (with a polite inclination toward Johnson): "Sir, you have known me twenty years, and however I may have treated others, you may be sure I could never treat you with contempt."-JOHNSON: "Sir, you have said more than was necessary." And with this friendly embrace the quarrel-scene terminated. Johnson dined with Beauclerk on Saturday week, and in the breaking of bread all enmity was cast away.

Yet, at the close of a chapter which has begun and ended with an explosion of temper endangering two of the best friendships Johnson ever knew, we cannot help remarking, that if we had undertaken to prove our good Doctor a perfect man, such as, in some people's judgment, all ought to be who are worthy of having their lives written, we should certainly have broken down long ere now under the pressure of such a heavy promise: unless, indeed, we had chosen to get over the difficulty thus-by shaping our notion of perfection to suit the size of our man. But this would have been a very dishonest way of dealing with a very honest soul. It is better to let Samuel Johnson speak for himself: speak through strength and weakness, sincerity and prejudice, love and bad temper, and all the other supposed incompatibles which nevertheless seem to get on very well together, side by side, in the same character. As, through all his scrofulous scars a good eye could discern a well-formed face, so, through all the Doctor's

362

PLEA FOR IMPERFECT MEN.

morbid melancholy we ought to see clearly a thoroughly healthy mind, through all his stubborn prejudices a rooted love of the truth, through all his narrow orthodoxy a deeply religious nature, and through all his objectionable outbursts a heart which was kindliness its very self: a man whose faults could do little harm because they were none of them disguised, and whose virtues could not fail to do good because they were all so pronounced; a man who made the forces of his nature tell upon his age, and who, though dead, yet speaketh-and to some purpose. "The blessed work of helping the world forward, happily does not wait to be done by perfect men: and it is more than probable that neither Luther nor John Bunyan, for example, would have satisfied the modern demand for an ideal hero, who believes nothing but what is true, feels nothing but what is exalted, and does nothing but what is graceful."

"I am in great pain with an inflamed foot, and obliged to keep my bed, so am prevented from having the pleasure to dine at Mr. Ramsay's to-day, which is very hard; and my spirits are sadly sunk. Will you be so friendly as to come and sit an hour with me in the evening? I am ever your most faithful

"And affectionate humble servant,

"Mr. Johnson laments the absence of Mr. Boswell, and will come to him."

He went, and took Sir Joshua Reynolds with him; and poor Bozzy almost forgot that he had a foot at all, not to say an inflamed one, while they sat and discoursed by his bedside.

On Monday evening, May 2nd, Boswell set out for Scotland.

"TO MRS. LUCY PORTER, IN LICHFIELD.

"DEAR MADAM,

"May 4, 1779.

"Mr. Green has informed me that you are much better; I hope I need not tell you that I am glad of it. I cannot boast of being