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POWERS OF INVECTIVE AND SATIRE.

BEING in company with a gentleman who thought fit to maintain Dr. Berkeley's ingenious philosophy, that nothing exists but as perceived by some mind, when the gentleman was going away, Johnson said to him, "Pray, sir, don't leave us; for we may perhaps forget to think of you, and then you will cease to exist."-Boswell.

Next day, Sunday, July 3d, I told him I had been that morning at a meeting of the people called Quakers, where I had heard a woman preach. Johnson: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."-Boswell.

"Hume and other sceptical innovators are vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expense. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity: so they have betaken themselves to error. Truth, sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull."-Boswell.

On the 6th of March came out Lord Bolingbroke's works, published by Mr. David Mallet. The wild and pernicious ravings, under the name of "Philosophy," which were thus ushered into the world, gave great offence to all well-principled men. Johnson, hearing of their tendency, which nobody disputed, was roused with a just indignation, and pronounced this memorable sentence upon the noble author and his editor: "Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death!"Boswell.

My much-valued friend, Dr. Barnard, now Bishop of Killaloe, having once expressed to him an apprehension that if he should visit Ireland he might treat the people of that country more unfavorably than he had done the Scotch, he answered, with strong, pointed, double-edged wit, "Sir, you have no reason to be afraid of me. The Irish are not in a conspiracy to cheat the world by false representations of the merits of their countrymen. No, sir; the Irish are a FAIR PEOPLE—they never speak well of one another." Boswell.

Johnson one day asked me, “Have you observed the difference between your own country impudence and Scotch impudence?" The answer being in the negative, “Then I will tell you," said Johnson; "the impudence of an Irishman is the impudence of a fly that buzzes about you, and you put it away; but it returns again, and still flutters and teases. The impudence of a Scotchman is the impudence of a leech, that fixes and sucks your blood."-Arthur Murphy.

Sir Allan Maclean bragged that Scotland had the advantage of England, by its having more water. Johnson: “Sir, we would not have your water, to take the vile bogs which produce it. You have too much! A man who is drowned has more water than either of us;" and then he laughed. (But this was surely robust sophistry; for the people of taste in England, who have seen Scotland, own that its variety of rivers and lakes makes it naturally more beautiful than England in that respect.) Pursuing his victory over Sir Allan, he proceeded: "Your country consists of two things, stone and water. There is, indeed, a little earth above the stone in some places, but a very little; and the stone is always appearing. It is like a man in rags; the naked skin is still peeping out."-Boswell.

We were by no means pleased with our inn at Bristol.

"Let us see now," said I, "how we should describe it." Johnson was ready with his raillery. "Describe it, sir? Why, it was so bad that Boswell wished to be in Scotland!"-Boswell.

Mr. Johnson's hatred of the Scotch is so well known, and so many of his bon mots expressive of that hatred have been already repeated, that it is perhaps scarcely worth while to write down the conversation between him and a friend of that nation who always resides in London, and who at his return from the Hebrides asked him, with a firm tone of voice, what he thought of his country? "That it is a very vile country, to be sure, sir," returned for answer Mr. Johnson. “Well, sir!" replies the other, somewhat mortified, "God made it." 66 Certainly He did," answers Mr. Johnson, again; "but we must always remember that He made it for Scotchmen, and comparisons are odious, Mr. Strahan; but God made hell."-Mrs. Piozzi.

It having been mentioned, I know not with what truth, that a certain female political writer, whose doctrines he disliked, had of late become very fond of dress, sat hours together at her toilet, and even put on rouge: Johnson: "She is better employed at her toilet than using her pen. It is better she should be reddening her own cheeks than blackening other people's characters."-Boswell.

A dull country magistrate gave Johnson a long, tedious account of his exercising his criminal jurisdiction, the result of which was having sentenced four convicts to transportation. Johnson, in an agony of impatience to get rid of such a companion, exclaimed, "I heartily wish, sir, that I were a fifth!"-Boswell.

Johnson having now explicitly avowed his opinion of Lord Chesterfield, did not refrain from expressing himself concerning that nobleman with pointed freedom: "This

man," said he, "I thought had been a lord among wits, but I find he is only a wit among lords!" And when his Letters to his natural son were published, he observed that "they teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancingmaster."-Boswell.

Of a certain player he remarked that his conversation usually threatened and announced more than it performed; that it fed you with a continual renovation of hope, to end in a constant succession of disappointment.-Boswell.

On my observing to him that a certain gentleman had remained silent the whole evening, in the midst of a very brilliant and learned society, “Sir," said he, "the conversation overflowed and drowned him."-Boswell.

A young fellow, very confident in his abilities, lamenting one day that he had lost all his Greek, "I believe it happened at the same time, sir," said Johnson," that I lost all my large estate in Yorkshire."-Mrs. Piozzi.

When some one was lamenting Foote's unlucky fate in being kicked, in Dublin, Johnson said he was glad of it. "He is rising in the world," said he. "When he was in England, no one thought it worth while to kick him."- Sir John Hawkins.

Hugh Kelly called upon Dr. Johnson, and, after sitting with him for a short time, rose to go, saying that he feared a longer visit might be troublesome. Dr. Johnson replied, "Not in the least, sir; I had forgotten that you were in the room."-Anonymous.

The next name that was started was that of Sir John Hawkins; and Mrs. Thrale said, "Why, now, Dr. Johnson, he is another of those whom you suffer nobody to abuse but

yourself. Garrick is one, too; for if any other person speaks against him, you browbeat him in a minute!" "Why, madam," answered he, "they don't know when to abuse him, and when to praise him; and I will allow no man to speak any ill of David that he does not deserve; and as to Sir John, why really I believe him to be an honest man at the bottom; but, to be sure, he is penurious, and he is mean, and it must be owned he has a degree of brutality and a tendency to savageness that cannot easily be defended."-Madame D'Arblay.

It is well known that there was formerly a rude custom for those who were sailing upon the Thames to accost each other as they passed in the most abusive language they could invent, generally, however, with as much satirical humor as they were capable of producing. Addison gives a specimen of this ribaldry in Number 383 of "The Spectator," when Sir Roger de Coverley and he are going to Spring Garden. Johnson was once eminently successful in this species of contest. A fellow having attacked him with some coarse raillery, Johnson answered him thus: “Sir, your wife, under pretence of keeping a bawdy-house, is a receiver of stolen goods.”—Boswell.

Mrs. Thrale complained that she was quite worn out with that tiresome, silly woman who had talked of her family and affairs till she was sick to death of hearing her. "Madam," said he, “why do you blame the woman for the only sensible thing she could do―talking of her family and her af fairs? For how should a woman who is as empty as a drum talk upon any other subject? If you speak to her of the sun, she does not know it rises in the east. If you speak to her of the moon, she does not know it changes at the full. If you speak to her of the queen, she does not know she is the king's wife. How, then, can you blame her for talking of her family and affairs ?"-Madame D'Arblay.

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