Mr. Dempster having endeavored to maintain that intrinsic merit ought to make the only distinction among mankind-Johnson: "Why, sir, mankind have found that this cannot be. How shall we determine the proportion of intrinsic merit? Were that to be the only distinction amongst mankind, we should soon quarrel about the degrees of it. Were all distinctions abolished, the strongest would not long acquiesce, but would endeavor to obtain a superiority by their bodily strength. But, sir, as subordination is very necessary for society, and contentions for superiority very dangerous, mankind, that is to say, all civilized nations, have settled it upon a plain, invariable principle. A man is born to hereditary rank; or his being appointed to certain offices gives him a certain rank. Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.” I said, I considered distinction or rank to be of so much importance in civilized society, that if I were asked on the same day to dine with the first duke in England, and with the first man in Britain for genius, I should hesitate which to prefer. Johnson: “To be sure, sir, if you were to dine only once, and it were never to be known where you dined, you would choose rather to dine with the first man for genius; but to gain most respect, you should dine with the first duke in England. For nine people in ten that you meet with would have a higher opinion of you for having dined with a duke; and the great genius himself would receive you better, because you had been with the great duke."-Boswell.

PREJUDICES AND NARROWNESS.

AN Irish gentleman said to Johnson, "Sir, you have not seen the best French players." Johnson: "Players, sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint-stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs." "But, sir, you will allow that some players are better than others?" Johnson: "Yes, sir, as some dogs dance better than others."-Boswell.

I told him that one morning when I went to breakfast with Garrick, who was very vain of his intimacy with Lord Camden, he accosted me thus: "Pray now, did you-did you meet a little lawyer turning the corner, eh?" "No, sir," said I. "Pray what do you mean by the question ?" "Why," replied Garrick, with an affected indifference, yet as if standing on tiptoe, "Lord Camden has this moment left me. We have had a long walk together." Johnson: "Well, sir, Garrick talked very properly. Lord Camden was a little lawyer to be associated so familiarly with a player."Boswell.

Johnson: "Colley Cibber once consulted me as to one of his birthday Odes a long time before it was wanted. I objected very freely to several passages. Cibber lost patience, and would not read his ode to an end. When we had done

with criticism, we walked over to Richardson's, the author of 'Clarissa,' and I wondered to find Richardson displeased that I'did not treat Cibber with more respect.' Now, sir, to talk of respect for a player !" (smiling disdainfully). Boswell: "There, sir, you are always heretical; you never will allow merit to a player." Johnson: "Merit, sir! what merit? Do you respect a rope-dancer or a ballad-singer?" Boswell: "No, sir; but we respect a great player, as a man who can conceive lofty sentiments, and can express them gracefully." Johnson: "What, sir, a fellow who claps a

hump on his back, and a lump on his leg, and cries, 'I am Richard the Third? Nay, sir, a ballad-singer is a higher man, for he does two things: he repeats and he sings. There is both recitation and music in his performance; the player only recites." Boswell: "My dear sir, you may turn anything into ridicule. I allow that a player of farce is not entitled to respect; he does a little thing; but he who can represent exalted characters, and touch the noblest passions, has very respectable powers; and mankind have agreed in admiring great talents for the stage. We must consider, too, that a great player does what very few people are capable to do: his art is a very rare faculty. Who can repeat Hamlet's soliloquy, 'To be, or not to be,' as Garrick does it?" Johnson: "Anybody may. Jemmy there (a boy about eight years old, who was in the room) will do it as well in a week."-Boswell.

His negro servant, Francis Barber, having left him, and been some time at sea, not pressed, as has been supposed, with his own consent, it appears, from a letter to John Wilkes, Esq., from Dr. Smollett, that his master kindly interested himself in procuring his release from a state of life of which Johnson always expressed the utmost abhorrence. He said, "No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned." And at another time, "A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company."-Boswell.

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 to him with mild but steady astonishment, said, "Sir, this is an instance that we are always most violent against those whom

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we have injured." He was irritated still more by this delicate and keen reproach, and roared out another tremendous volley, which one might fancy could be heard across the Atlantic. During this tempest I sat in great uneasiness, lamenting his heat of temper, till, by degrees, I diverted his attention to other topics.-Boswell.

His unjust contempt for foreigners was, indeed, extreme. One evening, at Old Slaughter's coffee-house, when a number of them were talking loud about little matters, he said, "Does not this confirm old Meynell's observation, ‘For anything I see, foreigners are fools!"-Bennet Langton.

He had long before indulged most unfavorable sentiments of our fellow-subjects in America. For, as early as 1769, I was told by Dr. John Campbell that he had said of them, "Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging."-Boswell.

Mrs. Macsweyn, who officiated as our landlady here (in one of the Scottish islands), had never been on the main-land. On hearing this, Dr. Johnson said to me, before her, "That is rather being behindhand with life. I would at least go and see Glenelg." Boswell: "You yourself, sir, have never seen anything but your native island." Johnson: "But, sir, by seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show." Boswell: "You have not seen Pekin." John"What is Pekin? Ten thousand Londoners would drive all the people of Pekin: they would drive them like deer."-Boswell.

son:

Johnson: "The French, sir, are a very silly people. They have no common life-nothing but the two ends, beggary and nobility. Sir, they are made up in everything of two extremes. They have no common-sense, they have no common manners, no common learning. They are much

behindhand, stupid, ignorant creatures."- Miss Reynolds (abridged).

Johnson's prejudice against the French was especially bitter. He wrote to a friend soon after his return from the short visit which he made to France: "Their mode of com'mon life is gross, and incommodious, and disgusting. I am come home convinced that no improvement of general use is to be found among them." He noted in his journal that their meals were gross, and spoke of them repeatedly as "ill-bred, untaught people." He contrived to indulge two of his most violent prejudices in one sentence when he said, "France is worse than Scotland in everything but climate. Nature has done more for the French, but they have done less for themselves than the Scotch have done." It is amusing to find his personal feelings displayed even in his Dictionary, as in the following definitions:

"Tory. One who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state, and the apostolic hierarchy of the Church of England: opposed to a Whig. "Whig. The name of a faction.

"Pension. 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.

"Pensioner. A slave of state, hired by a stipend to obey his master.

"Oats. A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

"Excise. A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom the excise is paid."

Boswell had a talk with him about these definitions more than twenty years after the publication of the Dictionary, and says, "He mentioned a still stronger instance of the predominance of his private feelings in the composition of this work than any now to be found in it. 'You know, sir, Lord Gower forsook the old Jacobite interest. When I came to the word renegado, after telling that it meant 66 one who deserts to the enemy, a revolter," I added, "Sometimes we say