��Sir Joshua Reynolds on
��the surface, as is expressed in the lineaments of the countenance. An attempt to go deeper, and investigate the peculiar colouring of his mind as distinguished from all other minds, nothing but your earnest desire can excuse. Such as it is, you may make what use of it you please. Of his learning, and so much of his character as is discoverable in his writings and is open to the inspection of every person, nothing need be said.
I shall remark such qualities only a's his works cannot convey. And among those the most distinguished was his possessing a mind which was, as I may say, always ready for use x . Most general subjects had undoubtedly been already discussed in the course of a studious t'hinking life. In this respect few men ever came better prepared into whatever company chance might throw him, and the love which he had to society gave him a facility in the practice of applying his knowledge of the matter in hand in which I Selieve he was never exceeded by any man. It has been frequently observed that he was a singular instance of a man who had so much distinguished himself by his writings that his conversation not only supported his character as an author, but, in the opinion of" many, was superior 2 . Those who have lived with the wits of the age know how rarely this happens. I have had the habit of thinking that this quality, as well as others of the same kind, are possessed in consequence of accidental circumstances attending his life. What Dr. Johnson said a few days before his death of his disposition to insanity was no new discovery to those who were intimate with him 3 . The character of Imlac 4 in Rasselas, I always considered as a comment on his own conduct, which he himself practised, and
��1 ' Sir Joshua observed to me the extraordinary promptitude with which Johnson flew upon an argument.' Life, ii. 365. ' His superiority over other learned men consisted chiefly in what may be called the art of thinking, the art of using his mind.' Ib. iv. 427.
2 ' Burke (said Johnson) is the only man whose common conversa tion corresponds with the general
��fame which he has in the world.' Ib. iv. 19. It was no doubt the excellence of Johnson's talk that made Burke affirm 'that Boswell's Life was a greater monument to Johnson's fame than all his writings put together.' Life of Mackintosh, 1.92.
3 Life, i. 65; iii. 175; v. 215; Letters, i. 39 ; ante, i. 78.
4 Life^ iii. 6.
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