202 Anecdotes.
��let us not fancy like Swift that we are exalting a woman's character by telling how she
Could name the ancient heroes round, Explain for what they were renown'd, c. x '
I must not however lead my readers to suppose that he meant to reserve such talk for men's company as a proof of pre-eminence. while he lived : such conversation was lost time (he said), and carried one away from common life, leaving no ideas behind which could serve living wight 1 " as warning or direction.'
How I should act is not the case, But how would Brutus in my place ?
' And now (cries Mr. Johnson, laughing with obstreperous vio lence), if these two foolish lines can be equalled in folly, except by the two succeeding ones 4 shew them me/
I asked him once concerning the conversation powers of a gentleman with whom I was myself unacquainted 5 * He
selves, what we can turn to use.' leteer in the Garret to the Patriot in
Life, v. 79. the Senate as extremely worthy of the
All this shows little of ' the fierce Imitation of Britons' Four Tracts
and boisterous contempt of ignor- by Josiah Tucker, D.D., 1774, p. 60.
ance' with which, according to Lord 3 Paradise Lost, ii. 613.
Macaulay, Johnson spoke of history. 4 How shall I act is not the
Macaulay's Essays, ed. 1843, i. 403. case ;
1 'She nam'd the ancient heroes But how would Brutus in my
round, place ?
Explain'd for what they were In such a case would Cato
renown'd ; bleed ?
Then spoke with censure or And how would Socrates pro- applause ceed ? ' Of foreign customs, rites and To Stella, 1720. Swift's Works, x.
laws.' 187.
Cademis and Vanessa. Swift's 5 Mrs. Piozzi, in a marginal note,
Works, ed. 1803, x. 128. says it was Charles James Fox.
2 Writing to Mrs. Thrale in July, Hayward's Piozzi, i. 292.
1775, he says : ' Therefore wherever ' I have heard Mr. Gibbon remark,'
you are and whatever you see talk writes Boswell, ' that Mr. Fox could
not of the Punick War.' Letters, not be afraid of Dr. Johnson ; yet
i. 343. he certainly was very shy of saying
' The example of the Romans is anything in Dr. Johnson's presence.'
eternally quoted from the Pamph- Life, iii. 267. See also ib. iv. 167.
talked
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