evening at the club, I came in with a small roll of prints, which, in the afternoon, I had picked up : I think they were landscapes of Perelle x , and laying it down with my hat, Johnson's curiosity prompted him to take it up and unroll it ; he viewed the prints severally with great attention, and asked me what sort of pleasure such things could afford me ; I told him, that as representa tions of nature, containing an assemblage of such particulars as render rural scenes delightful, they presented to my mind the objects themselves, and that my imagination realised the pros pect before me ; he said, that was more than his would do, for that in his whole life he was never capable of discerning the \/ least resemblance of any kind between a picture and the subject it was intended to represent 2 .
To the delights of music, he was equally insensible : neither voice nor instrument, nor the harmony of concordant sounds, had power over his affections, or even to engage his attention. Of music in general, he has been heard to say, ' it excites in my mind no ideas, and hinders me from contemplating my own;' and of a fine singer, or instrumental performer, that ' he had the merit of a Canary-bird 3 .' (Page
��The uses for which Francis Barber was intended to serve his master were not very apparent, for Diogenes himself never wanted a servant less than he seemed to do 4 : the great bushy wig, which throughout his life he affected to wear, by that close ness of texture which it had contracted and been suffered to retain, was ever nearly as impenetrable by a comb as a quickset
1 There were in the seventeenth rapture which the company expressed century three French engravers of upon hearing the compositions and the name of Perelle or Perrelle, a performance of Handel did not pro- father and two sons. Nouv. Biog. ceed wholly from affectation.' War- Gen. ton's Pope's Works, v. 235 n.
2 This was an exaggeration on the ' Newton, hearing Handel play on part of either Johnson or Hawkins. the harpsichord, could find nothing Life, i. 363, n. 3. See also ante, worthy to remark but the elasticity i. 214. of his fingers. At another time, being
3 Life, 11.409. asked his opinion of poetry, he quoted 'Pope was so very insensible to a sentiment of Barrow, that it was
the charms of music that he once ingenious nonsense.' Id. iii. 176 n. asked Dr. Arbuthnot, whether the 4 Ante, i. 329.
hedge
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