��talked to me at club one day (replies our Doctor) concerning Catiline's conspiracy so I withdrew my attention, and thought about Tom Thumb.'
Modern politics fared no better. I was one time extolling the character of a statesman, and expatiating on the skill required to direct the different currents, reconcile the jarring interests, &c. ' Thus (replies he) a mill is a complicated piece of mechanism
enough, but the water is no part of the workmanship.' On
another occasion, when some one lamented the weakness of a then present minister 1 , and complained that he was dull and tardy, and knew little of affairs, ' You may as well com plain, Sir (says Johnson), that the accounts of time are kept by the clock ; for he certainly does stand still upon the stair head and we all know that he is no great chronologer.' In
the year 1777, or thereabouts, when all the talk was of an invasion, he said most pathetically one afternoon, ' Alas ! alas ! how this unmeaning stuff spoils all my comfort in my friends' conversation ! Will the people never have done with it ; and shall I never hear a sentence again without the French in it ? Here is no invasion coming, and you knoiv there is none 2 . Let the vexatious and frivolous talk alone, or suffer it at least to teach you one truth ; and learn by this perpetual echo of even unapprehended distress, how historians magnify events expected, or calamities endured ; when you know they are at this very moment collecting all the big words they can find, in which to describe a consternation never felt, for a misfortune which never happened. Among all your lamentations, who eats the less 3 ? Who sleeps the worse, for one general's ill
1 She means I suppose ' a minister without spirit.'
of that time.' Perhaps it was the 2 It was in 1778 and 1779 that
Duke of Grafton. Horace Walpole there was a great panic about an
wrote of him on June 16, 1768: invasion. Life, iii. 326; Letters, ii.
' Because we are not in confusion 109.
enough he makes everything as bad 3 ' We are told that on the arrival
as possible, neglecting on one hand, of the news of the unfortunate battle
and taking no precaution on the of Fontenoy every heart beat and
other.' Letters, v. 106. Junius, in every eye was in tears. Now we
his Letter of April 10, 1769, described know that no man eat his dinner the
him as ' a singular instance of youth worse.' Life, i. 355.
success
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