Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/58

The whole-hearted delight that was felt by Boswell in Johnson’s dialectical triumphs, and particularly in his well-known knock-out blow, has perhaps given too strong an impression of his violence and rudeness in conversation. The roaring down of timid objectors, the loud, personal retorts, the attack on his adversaries with the butt-end of his pistol, these things are recorded by all, and cannot be denied. Yet it must be remembered that Johnson himself was hardly aware of them. The explosive force of his utterances was produced by the strong workings of his mind. He meant no offence, and was surprised and disquieted when he found that offence was taken. He was willing to fight on the smallest provocation, but he hated quarrels, and the feelings that beget quarrels. ‘The cup of life,’ he said, ‘is surely bitter enough, without squeezing in the hateful rind of resentment.’ He believed that the innocence of his heart was reflected in his manners. ‘I look upon myself,’ he once said to Boswell, ‘as a very polite man.’ And again, to Mrs. Thrale, he gave an even more complacent account. ‘You may observe,’ he said, ‘that I am well-bred to a degree of needless scrupulosity. No man is so cautious not to interrupt another; no man thinks it so necessary to appear attentive when others are speaking; no man so steadily refuses preference to himself, or so willingly bestows it on another, as I do; nobody holds so strongly as I do the necessity of ceremony, and the ill effects which follow the breach of it: yet people think me rude.’ Some part of this defence is supported by the testimony of Sir John Hawkins: ‘He encouraged others, particularly young men, to speak, and paid a due attention to what they said.’ And there is no doubt that when he took care of his own behaviour, and