y you are thought on by others, unless you desire to be meanly
thought of by all."

The little history of another friend's superfluous ingenuity will
contribute to introduce a similar remark. He had a daughter of about
fourteen years old, as I remember, fat and clumsy; and though the father
adored, and desired others to adore her, yet being aware, perhaps, that
she was not what the French call paitrie des graces, and thinking, I
suppose, that the old maxim of beginning to laugh at yourself first when
you have anything ridiculous about you was a good one, he comically
enough called his girl _Trundle_ when he spoke of her; and many who bore
neither of them any ill-will felt disposed to laugh at the happiness of
the appellation. "See, now," says Dr. Johnson, "what haste people are in
to be hooted. Nobody ever thought of this fellow nor of his daughter,
could he but have been quiet himself, and forborne to call the eyes of
the world on his dowdy and her deformity. But it teaches one to see at
least that if nobody else will nickname one's children, the parents will
e'en do it themselves."

All this held true in matters to Mr. Johnson of more serious consequence.
When Sir Joshua Reynolds had painted his portrait looking into the slit
of his pen, and holding it almost close to his eye, as was his general
custom, he felt displeased, and told me "he would not be known by
posterity for his _defects_ only, let Sir Joshua do his worst." I said
in reply that Reynolds had no such difficulties about himself, and that
he might observe the picture which hung up in the room where we were
talking represented Sir Joshua holding his ear in his hand to catch the
sound. "He may paint himself as deaf if he chooses," replied Johnson,
"but I will not be _Blinking Sam_."

It is chiefly for the sake of evincing the regularity and steadiness of
Mr. Johnson's mind that I have given these trifling memoirs, to show that
his soul was not different from that of another person, but, as it was,
greater; and to give those who did not know him a just idea of his
acquiescence in what we call vulgar prejudices, and of his extreme
distance from those notions which the world has agreed, I know not very
well why, to call romantic. It is indeed observable in his preface to
Shakespeare, that while other critics expatiate on the creative powers
and vivid imagination of that matchless poet, Dr. Johnson commends him
for giving so just a representation of hum