being put to the question. Boswell prided himself on his talent in drawing people out, and certainly was both courageous and skilful at the business. The directness of his assault when he talked to Johnson has this excuse, that Johnson, on the testimony of his friends, never started a topic of conversation. He left others to put up the game, and was content to shoot it. ‘No one,’ says Mrs. Thrale, ‘was less willing to begin any discourse than himself: his friend Mr. Thomas Tyers said, he was like the ghosts, who never speak till they are spoken to: and he liked the expression so well that he often repeated it. He had, indeed, no necessity to lead the stream of chat to a favourite channel, that his fullness on the subject might be shewn more clearly, whatever was the topic; and he usually left the choice to others.’ Boswell tells, in The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, how, when they were shown the military stores at Fort George, Johnson made a very good figure in conversation with the officers on the various stages of the manufacture of gunpowder.
This is how it comes about that Johnson’s retorts are sometimes not fully expressive of himself, and must not be taken to convey his most deeply cherished convictions. He did not choose the subject, and when others chose it he was often displeased by the choice.
Boswell, for instance, attributes to him in many passages an almost sentimental horror of the very name of death. It is true that Johnson thought often of death; but he did not think of it sentimentally. ‘When we were alone,’ says Boswell, under the year 1769, ‘I introduced the subject of death, and endeavoured to maintain that the fear of it might be got over.’ After some exchange of argument, Johnson answered, in a passion, ‘No, Sir,
