way about, rather than cross a particular alley in Leicesterfields; but this Sir Joshua imputed to his having had some disagreeable recollection associated with it.

That the most minute singularities which belonged to him, and made very observable parts of his appearance and manner, may not be omitted, it is requisite to mention that while talking, or even musing, as he sat in his chair, he commonly held his head to one side toward his right shoulder, and shook it in a tremulous manner, moving his body backward and forward, and rubbing his left knee in the same direction with the palm of his hand. In the intervals of articulating, he made various sounds with his mouth; sometimes as if ruminating, or what is called chewing the cud, sometimes giving a half whistle, sometimes making his tongue play backward from the roof of his mouth, as if chuckling like a hen, and sometimes protruding it against his upper gums in front, as if pronouncing quickly under his breath, too, too, too, all this accompanied sometimes with a thoughtful look, but more frequently with a smile. Generally when he had concluded a period, in the course of a dispute, by which time he was a good deal exhausted by violence and vociferation, he used to blow out his breath like a whale. This, I suppose, was a relief to his lungs; and seemed in him to be a contemptuous mode of expression, as if he had made the arguments of his opponent fly like chaff before the wind.-Boswell.

CONVULSIVE MOVEMENTS.-Those motions or tricks of Dr. Johnson are improperly called convulsions. He could sit motionless, when he was told so to do, as well as any other man. My opinion is, that it proceeded from a habit, which he had indulged himself in, of accompanying his thoughts with certain untoward actions, and those actions always appeared to me as if they were meant to reprobate some part of his past conduct. Whenever he was not engaged in conversation, such thoughts were sure to rush into his mind;

and, for this reason, any company, any employment whatever, he preferred to being alone. The great business of his life, he said, was to escape from himself; this disposition he considered as the disease of his mind, which nothing cured but company.

One instance of his absence of mind and particularity, as it is characteristic of the man, may be worth relating. When he and I took a journey together into the West, we visited the late Mr. Banks, of Dorsetshire; the conversation turning upon pictures, which Johnson could not well see, he retired to a corner of the room, stretching out his right leg as far as he could reach before him, then bringing up his left leg, and stretching his right still farther on. The old gentleman observing him, went up to him, and in a very courteous manner assured him, though it was not a new house, the flooring was perfectly safe. The doctor started from his reverie, like a person waked out of his sleep, but spoke not a word.—Sir Joshua Reynolds.

His head, and sometimes also his body, shook with a kind of motion like the effect of a palsy; he appeared to be frequently disturbed by cramps, or convulsive contractions, of the nature of that distemper called "St. Vitus's dance."Boswell.

The house on the right at the bottom of Beaufort Buildings was occupied by Mr. Chamberlaine, Mrs. Sheridan's eldest brother, by whom Johnson was often invited in the snug way with the family party. At one of those social meetings Johnson, as usual, sat next the lady of the house; the dessert still continuing, and the ladies in no haste to withdraw, Mrs. Chamberlaine had moved a little back from the table, and was carelessly dangling her foot backward and forward as she sat, enjoying "The feast of reason and the flow of soul." Johnson, the while, in a moment of abstraction, was convulsively working his hand up and down,

which the lady observing, she roguishly edged her foot within his reach, and, as might partly have been expected, Johnson clutched hold of it and drew off her shoe; she started, and hastily exclaimed," Oh, fie! Mr. Johnson!" The company at first knew not what to make of it; but one of them, perceiving the joke, tittered. Johnson, not improbably aware of the trick, apologized. "Nay, madam, recollect yourself; I know not that I have justly incurred your rebuke; the motion was involuntary, and the action not intentionally rude."-Whyte's Miscel. Nova.

I believe no one has described his extraordinary gestures or antics with his hands and feet, particularly when passing over the threshold of a door, or rather before he would venture to pass through any door-way. On entering Sir Joshua's house with poor Mrs. Williams, a blind lady who lived with him, he would quit her hand, or else whirl her about on the steps as he whirled and twisted about to perform his gesticulations; and as soon as he had finished, he would give a sudden spring, and make such an extensive stride over the threshold as if he was trying for a wager how far he could stride; Mrs. Williams standing groping about outside the door, unless the servant took hold of her hand to conduct her in, leaving Dr. Johnson to perform at the parlor door much the same exercise over again.

But it was not only at the entrance of a door that he exhibited such strange manœuvres, but across a room, or in the street with company he has stopped on a sudden, as if he had recollected his task, and began to perform it there, gathering a mob round him; and when he had finished, would hasten to his companion (who probably had walked on before) with an air of great satisfaction that he had done his duty. One Sunday morning, as I was walking with him in Twickenham meadows, he began his antics, both with his feet and hands, with the latter as if he was holding the reins of a horse like a jockey on full speed. But to describe the

strange positions of his feet is a difficult task; sometimes he would make the back part of his heels to touch, sometimes his toes, as if he was aiming at making the form of a triangle, at least the two sides of one. Though, indeed, whether these were his gestures on this particular occasion I do not now recollect, it is so long since; but I well remember that they were so extraordinary that men, women, and children gathered round him, laughing. At last we sat down on some logs of wood by the river-side, and they nearly dispersed, when he pulled out of his pocket Grotius's "De Veritate Religionis," over which he see-sawed at such a violent rate as to excite the curiosity of some people at a distance to come and see what was the matter with him. - Miss Reynolds.

HABIT OF SCRAPING HIS FINGERS.-Such was the heat and irritability of his blood, that not only did he pare his nails. to the quick, but scraped the joints of his fingers with a penknife, till they seemed quite red and raw.-Boswell.

LAUGHTER.-I passed many hours with him on the 17th, of which I find all my memorial is, "much laughing." It should seem he had that day been in a humor for jocularity and merriment, and upon such occasions I never knew a man laugh more heartily. We may suppose that the high relish of a state so different from his habitual gloom produced more than ordinary exertions of that distinguishing faculty of man, which has puzzled philosophers so much to explain. Johnson's laugh was as remarkable as any circumstance in his manner. It was a kind of good-humored growl. Tom Davies described it drolly enough: "He laughs like a rhinoceros."--Boswell.

There is a beautiful little island in the Loch of Dunvegan, called Isa. Macleod said he would give it to Dr. Johnson on condition of his residing on it three months in the year;

nay, one month. Dr. Johnson was highly amused with the fancy. I have seen him please himself with little things, even with mere ideas like the present. He talked a great deal of this island; how he would build a house there, how he would fortify it, how he would have cannon, how he would plant, how he would sally out and take the Isle of Muck; and then he laughed with uncommon glee, and could hardly leave off. I have seen him do so at a small matter that struck him, and was a sport to no one else. Mr. Langton told me that one night he did so while the company were all grave about him; only Garrick, in his significant smart manner, darting his eyes around, exclaimed, “Very jocose, to be sure !"-Boswell.

He maintained the dignity and propriety of male succession, in opposition to the opinion of one of our friends, who had that day employed Mr. Chambers to draw his will, devising his estate to his three sisters, in preference to a remote heir male. Johnson called them "three dowdies," and said, with as high a spirit as the boldest baron in the most perfect days of the feudal system, "An ancient estate should always go to males. It is mighty foolish to let a stranger have it because he marries your daughter and takes your name. As for an estate newly acquired by trade, you may give it, if you will, to the dog Towser, and let him keep his own name."

I have known him at times exceedingly diverted at what seemed to others a very small sport. He now laughed immoderately, without any reason that we could perceive, at our friend's making his will; called him the testator, and added, "I dare say he thinks he has done a mighty thing. He won't stay till he gets home to his seat in the country, to produce this wonderful deed: he'll call up the landlord of the first inn on the road, and, after a suitable preface upon the mortality and the uncertainty of life, will tell him that he should not delay making his will; and ‘here, sir,'