��A necdotes.
��veracity was indeed, from the most trivial to the most solemn occasions, strict, even to seventy; he scorned to embellish a story with fictitious circumstances, which (he used to say) took off from its real value. 'A story (says Johnson) should be a specimen of life and manners ; but if the surrounding circum stances are false, as it is no more a representation of reality, it is no longer worthy our attention '.'
For the rest That beneficence which during his life increased the comforts of so many, may after his death be perhaps ungratefully forgotten ; but that piety which dictated the serious papers in the Rambler, will be for ever remembered ; for ever, I think, revered. That ample repository of religious truth, moral wisdom, and accurate criticism, breathes indeed the genuine emanations of its great Author's mind, expressed too in a style so natural to him, and so much like his common mode of conversing 2 , that I was myself but little astonished when he told me, that he had scarcely read over one of those inimitable essays before they went to the press 3 .
I will add one or two peculiarities more, before I lay down my pen. Though at an immeasurable distance from content in
��1 'Johnson said, "The value of every story depends on its being true. A story is a picture either of an individual or of human nature in general ; if it be false, it is a pic ture of nothing. For instance : suppose a man should tell that Johnson, before setting out for Italy, as he had to cross the Alps, sat down to make himself wings. This many people would believe ; but it would be a picture of nothing.
- used to think a story,
a story, till I shewed him that truth was essential to it.' Life, ii. 433. See ante, p. 225.
2 ' I could not help remarking how very like Dr. Johnson is to his writing, and how much the same thing it was to hear or to read him ; but that no body could tell that without coming
��to Streatham, for his language was generally imagined to be laboured and studied, instead of the mere common flow of his thoughts. " Very true," said Mrs. Thrale, " he writes and talks with the same ease, and in the same manner." ' Mme. D'Ar- blay's Diary, i. 120.
3 'He told us, "almost all his Ramblers were written just as they were wanted for the press ; that he sent a certain portion of the copy of an essay, and wrote the remainder, while the former part of it was printing. When it was wanted, and he had fairly sat down to it, he was sure it would be done." ' Life, iii. 42. He carefully revised them for the collected edition. Ib. i. 203, n. 6.
the
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