428 Minor Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson.
an extensive labyrinth, but that it would prove a deception, though I hoped not an unpardonable one. * Sir/ said he, ' don't tell me of deception ; a lie, Sir, is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear.'
Passing on we came to an urn which I had erected to the memory of a deceased friend. I asked him how he liked that urn it was of the true Tuscan order. ' Sir,' said he, ' I hate urns 1 ; they are nothing, they mean nothing, convey no ideas but ideas of horror would they were beaten to pieces to pave our streets!'
We then came to a cold bath. I expatiated upon its salubrity. ' Sir/ said he, ' how do you do ? } ' Very well, I thank you, Doctor.' * Then, Sir, let well enough alone, and be content. I hate immersion 2 .' Truly, as Falstaff says, the Doctor 'would have a sort of alacrity at sinking V
Upon the margin stood the Venus de' Medicis
' So stands the statue that enchants the world V
' Throw her,' said he, ' into the pond to hide her nakedness, and to cool her lasciviousness.'
He then, with some difficulty, squeezed himself into a root- house, when his eye caught the following lines from Parnell :
' Go search among your idle dreams, Your busy, or your vain extremes, And find a life of equal bliss, Or own the next began in this 5 .'
The Doctor, however, not possessing any silvan ideas, seemed not to admit that heaven could be an Arcadia.
1 He wrote to Mrs. Thrale : n. I. Johnson swam at Oxford
'Mr. 's erection of an urn looks and at Brighton. Ib. i. 348; ante,
like an intention to bury me alive.' i. 224.
Letters, ii. 33. 3 ' You may know by my size that
2 Johnson in his review of Lucas's I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.' Essay on Waters says: 'This in- The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act stance does not prove that the cold iii. sc. 5, 1. 12.
bath produces health, but only that 4 Thomson, Summer, 1. 1346. it will not always destroy it. He is 5 ' Or own the next begun in this.' well with the bath, he would have A Hymn to Contentment. Parnell, been well without it.' Life, i. 91, Aldine Poets, p. 99.
I then
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