The question, whether drinking improved conversation and benevolence, was discussed. Sir Joshua maintained it did. Johnson said, "No, sir; before dinner, men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority have the modesty not to talk. When they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous; but he is not improved: he is only not sensible of his defects."

A pension he defined in his Dictionary to be, "An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state-hireling for treason to his country." After such a definition, it is scarcely to be wondered, naturally observes the critic, that Johnson paused, and felt some compunctious visitings" before he accepted a pension himself.

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He loved a good hater. "Dr. Bathurst," he said, was a man to my heart's content: he hated a fool, and he hated a rogue, and he hated a Whig; he was a very good hater."

Every one knows the violence of his prejudices against the Whigs, the Americans, the Scotch, and the Presbyterians. He meant to say a very severe thing when he called Burke a "bottomless Whig," and generally spoke of Whigs as rascals, and maintained that the first Whig was the devil. Hating Walpole and the Whig excise act, he defines Excise, “A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged, not by the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid." He said, "I am willing to love all mankind, except an American ;" and his "inflammable corruption bursting into horrid fire, he breathed out threatenings and slaughter;" calling them "rascals, robbers, pirates;" and exclaiming, "he'd burn and destroy them." Miss Seward, looking at him with mild but steady astonish

ment, said, "Sir, this is an instance that we are always most violent against those whom we have injured." He was irritated still more by this delicate and keen reproach; and roared out another tremendous volley, which one might fancy, imagined Boswell, could be heard across the Atlantic. The inn that the Doctor and Boswell once

stayed at for a while was wretched. "Let us see now,” said Boswell, "how we should describe it." "Describe it, sir," said Johnson. "Why, it was so bad that Boswell wished to be in Scotland." "Scotland is a very vile country, to be sure, sir," said Johnson to Strahan, who was also a Scotchman. "Well, sir," replied the latter, somewhat mortified, "God made it." "Certainly he did," answered Johnson, "but we must remember that he made it for Scotchmen, and comparisons are odious, Mr. Strahan; but God made hell." Oats he defines, in his Dictionary, "A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people." "Yes," observed Lord Elibank, when he heard the offensive definition, "and where will you find such horses and such men? He would not allow Scotland to derive any credit from Lord Mansfield, for he was educated in England. "Much," said he, "may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young." But we must say that we think that he was bigger in his bigotries than in any thing else. Who but "that majestic teacher of moral and religious wisdom" could have declined to hear Dr. Robertson preach, for no other reason than that he "would not be seen in a Presbyterian church"? One of the tall steeples in Edinburgh, which he was told was in danger, he wished not to be taken down; "for," said he, "it may fall on some of the posterity of John Knox; and no great matter." Like the detested and infamous Jeffreys, he could "smell a Presbyterian forty miles."

Not long before his death, Johnson applied to Langton for spiritual advice. "I desired him," he said, "to tell

me sincerely in what he thought my life was faulty." Langton wrote upon a sheet of paper certain texts recommending Christian charity; and explained, upon inquiry, that he was pointing at Johnson's violence of vituperation and contradiction. The old Doctor began by thanking him earnestly for his kindness; but gradually waxed savage, and asked Langton, in a loud and angry tone, "What is your drift, sir?" He complained of the well-meant advice, to Boswell, with a sense that he had been unjustly treated. It was a scene for a comedy, as Reynolds observed, to see a penitent get into a passion and belabor his confessor.

Dozing one day in a railway car, in the State of Minnesota, there appeared before us, suddenly, in a seat at the other end of the carriage, a personage who seemed to be in every way familiar. His face was toward us, and he was busily engaged conversing with the man in the seat before him. The figure was enormous, and very remarkable. It filled nearly the whole seat, so gigantic it appeared. It stooped horribly; the back was round; the mouth was continually opening and shutting, as if the man were chewing something; he twisted his fingers; he twirled his hands; he see-sawed backward and forward; his feet seemed never for a moment quiet; his whole great person looked often as if it were going to roll itself quite voluntarily from his seat to the floor. Now and then he rubbed his knee with the palm of his hand, chewing his cud, and blowing out his breath like a whale. His face was disfigured by scars. His eyes were near, and otherwise imperfect. His head shook with a kind of motion like the effect of a palsy. He wore a bushy gray

wig, and a brown coat, with metal buttons, and enormous pockets. Black worsted stockings and silver buckles were conspicuous. A huge English oak-stick was between his knees. He talked in a bow-wow way. He laughed like a rhinoceros. We felt sure the remarkable

man was Doctor Johnson; so sure, that we determined to approach him, whatever the risk. Respectfully, reverentially calling him by name, and apologizing for the intrusion, he said, with a sort of smile extending over his now more familiar face, "No intrusion, sir. Your approach is both natural and welcome. Let me introduce you to my friend Boswell. He is a Scotchman, sir, but he won't hurt you." In the act of extending a hand to Bozzy, and laughing at so amusing an exhibition of one of the Doctor's characteristic prejudices, the interview ended.

Cuthbert Shaw, in his poem entitled The Race, in which he whimsically made the living poets of England contend for pre-eminence of fame by running, gives an animated description of Johnson. We have only room for eight lines of it:

"To view him, porters with their loads would rest,
And babes cling frighted to the nurse's breast.
With looks convulsed, he roars in pompous strain,
And, like an angry lion, shakes his mane.

The Nine, with terror struck, who ne'er had seen
Aught human with so terrible a mien,
Debating whether they should stay or run,
Virtue steps forth, and claims him for her son."

IV.

LORD MACAULAY.

AS A READER.

PERHAPS no one ever existed who was a greedier reader or who had better mental digestion than Lord Macaulay. From his infancy, he was an insatiable and omnivorous devourer of books. His nephew, in his delightful biography of him, tells us, that from the time he was three years old he read incessantly, for the most part lying on the rug before the fire, with his book in one hand, and a piece of bread and butter in the other. A woman who lived in the house as a parlor-maid, told how he used to sit in his nankeen frock, perched on the table by her as she was cleaning the plate, expounding to her out of a volume as big as himself. Hannah More, it is said, was fond of relating how she called at Mr. Macaulay's, and was met by a fair, pretty, slight child, about four years of age, with abundance of light hair, who came to the frontdoor to receive her, and tell her that his parents were out, but that if she would be good enough to come in he would bring her a glass of old spirits; a proposition which greatly startled the good lady, who had never aspired beyond cowslip-wine. When questioned as to what he knew about old spirits, he could only say that Robinson Crusoe often had some. In childhood he was permitted to make frequent and long visits to the Misses More, and to Hannah especially he was greatly indebted for valuable suggestions and direction in his reading. When he was six years old, she writes to him: "Though you are a little