He always carried a religious treatise in his pocket on a Sunday I , and he used to encourage me to relate to him the particular parts of Scripture I did not understand, and to write them down as they occurred to me in reading the Bible.
One Sunday morning, as I was walking with him in Twicken ham meadows, he began his antics both with his feet and hands, with the latter as if he was holding the reins of a horse like a jockey on full speed. But to describe the strange positions of his feet is a difficult task ; sometimes he would make the back part of his heels to touch, sometimes his toes, as if he was aiming at making the form of a triangle, at least the two sides of one 2 . Though indeed, whether these were his gestures on this particular occasion in Twickenham meadows I do not recollect, it is so long since ; but I well remember that they were so extraordinary that men, women, and children gathered round him, laughing. At last we sat down on some logs of wood by the river side, and they nearly dispersed ;. when he pulled out of his pocket Grotius De Veritate Religionis 3 , over which he seesawed at such a violent rate as to excite the curiosity of some people at a distance to come and see what was the matter with him.
As we were returning from the meadows that day, I remember we met Sir John Hawkins r whom Dr. Johnson seemed much
the contrary, the truth is, that by placent than he used to be. I was
much the greatest part of his time struck with the mild radiance of this
he was civil, obliging, nay, polite in setting sun.' Ante, ii. 201.
the true sense of the word.' Life, x Perhaps he did not always read
iii. 80. See also ante, i. 189. in it. Boswell records how in the
He grew milder as he grew older. Sunday he spent in Edinburgh :
Miss Burney wrote in May : ' He took down Ogden's Sermons on
' Dr. Johnson was charming, both in Prayer, and retired with them to his
spirits and humour. I really think room. He did not stay long, but
he grows gayer and gayer daily, and soon joined us in the drawing-room.'
more ductile and pleasant. 3 Mme. Life, v. 29. The following Sunday
D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 23. Beattie, at Aberdeen, ' he borrowed a volume
a week or two later, wrote : * John- of Massilloris Discourses on the
son grows in grace as he grows in Psalms-, but I found he read little
years. He has contracted a gentle- in it. Ogden too he sometimes took
ness of manner which pleases every up, and glanced at ; but threw it
body.' Beattie's Life, 1824, p. 289. down again.' Ib. v. 88.
Hannah More wrote in 1783 : ' Dr. 2 Ante, ii. 274, n. i.
Johnson is more mild and com- 3 Life, i. 398, 454; ante, i. 157.
rejoiced
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