302 Anecdotes.
��loads life with unnecessary scruples x , Sir (continued he), pro vokes the attention of others on his conduct, and incurs the censure of singularity without reaping the reward of superior virtue.'
I must not, among the anecdotes of Dr. Johnson's life, omit to relate a thing that happened to him one day, which he told me of himself. As he was walking along the Strand a gentleman stepped out of some neighbouring tavern, with his napkin 2 in his hand and no hat, and stopping him as civilly as he could I beg your pardon, Sir ; but you are Dr. Johnson, I believe.
- Yes, Sir.' We have a wager depending on your reply : Pray,
Sir, is it irreparable or irrepairable that one should say ? The last I think, Sir (answered Dr. Johnson), for the adjective ought to follow the verb ; but you had better consult my dictionary than me 3 , for that was the result of more thought than you will now give me time for.' No, no, replied the gentleman gaily, the book I have no certainty at all of; but here is the author, to whom I referred : Is he not, Sir ? to a friend with him : I have won my twenty guineas quite fairly, and am much obliged to you, Sir; so shaking Mr. Johnson kindly by the hand, he went back to finish his dinner or desert.
Another strange thing he told me once which there was no danger of forgetting : how a young gentleman called on him one morning, and told him that his father having, just before his death, dropped suddenly into the enjoyment of an ample fortune, he, the son, was willing to qualify himself for genteel society by adding some literature to his other endowments, and wished to
be different (he observed) from an- a napkin seems ridiculous to a
other day. People may walk, but Frenchman, but in England we dine
not throw stones at birds. There at the tables of people of tolerable
may be relaxation, but there should fortune without them.' Travels in
be no levity.'" Life, v. 69. France, ed. 1890, p. 307.
1 Ante, p. 38, n. 5. 3 Irreparable in the Dictionary.
2 A napkin in a London tavern Mrs. Piozzi seems to have thought must have been a rare thing in those that the syllable pa in paro was days. Arthur Young, writing in 1790, long.
says : ' The idea of dining without
be
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