48 Anecdotes by
��nor cold.' ' And yet,' said I ; Doctor, you are not a lukewarm man/ This I thought pleased him, and as I sat next him, I had a fine opportunity of attending to his phiz ; and I could clearly see he was fond of having his quaint things laughed at, and they (without any force) gratified my propensity to affuse grinning. Mr. Dilly led him to give his opinion of men and things, of which he is very free, and Dilly will probably retail them all. Talking of the Scotch, (after Boswell was gone) he said, though they were not a learned nation, yet they were far removed from ignorance. Learning was new among them, and he doubted not but they would in time be a learned people, for they were a fine, bold enterprising people. He compared England and Scotland to two lions, the one saturated with his belly full, and the other prowling for prey. But the test he offered to prove that Scotland, tho' it had learning enough for common life, yet had not sufficient for the dignity of literature, was, that he defied any one to produce a classical book, written in Scotland since Buchanan x . Robertson, he said, used pretty words, but he liked Hume better 2 , and neither of them would he allow to be more to Clarendon 3 , than a rat to a cat. ' A Scotch surgeon,' says he ' may have more learning than an English one. and all Scotland could not muster learning enough for Louth's prelections 4 .' Turning to me, he said, 'you have produced classical writers and scholars ; I don't know,' says he, ( that any man is before Usher 5 , as a scholar, unless it may be Seldon [stc], and you have a philosopher, Boyle, and you have Swift and Congreve, but the latter,' says he, c denied you 6 ' ; and he might have added the former too 7 . He then said, you
1 Ante, ii. 5, 15. and a greater, he added, no church
2 In 1773 Johnson said: 'I have could boast of, at least in modern not read Hume.' Life, ii. 236 ; ante, times. 3 Ib. ii. 132.
ii. 10. 6 ' Southern mentioned Congreve
3 ' Clarendon (said Johnson) is with sharp censure as a man that supported by his matter. It is in- meanly disowned his native coun- deed owing to a plethory of matter try.' Works, viii. 23.
that his style is so faulty.' Life, iii. 7 * Swift was contented to be called
258. an Irishman by the Irish, but would
4 For Lowth see ib. ii. 37. occasionally call himself an English-
5 'Usher (Johnson said) was the man.' Ib. viii. 192. great luminary of the Irish church ;
certainly
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