ast much of the encounter. Burke seems to have
been the only person who had a chance with him; and it is the unpardonable
sin of Boswell's work, that he has purposely omitted their combats of
strength and skill. Goldsmith asked, "Does he wind into a subject like a
serpent, as Burke does?" And when exhausted with sickness, he himself
said, "If that fellow Burke were here now, he would kill me." It is to be
observed, that Johnson's colloquial style was as blunt, direct, and
downright, as his style of studied composition was involved and
circuitous. As when Topham Beauclere and Langton knocked him up at his
chambers, at three in the morning, and he came to the door with the poker
in his hand, but seeing them, exclaimed, "What, is it you, my lads? then
I'll have a frisk with you!" and he afterwards reproaches Langton, who
was a literary milksop, for leaving them to go to an engagement "with some
_un-idead_ girls." What words to come from the mouth of the great moralist
and lexicographer! His good deeds were as many as his good sayings. His
domestic habits, his tenderness to servants, and readiness to oblige his
friends; the quantity of strong tea that he drank to keep down sad
thoughts; his many labours reluctantly begun, and irresolutely laid aside;
his honest acknowledgment of his own, and indulgence to the weaknesses of
others; his throwing himself back in the post-chaise with Boswell, and
saying, "Now I think I am a good-humoured fellow," though nobody thought
him so, and yet he was; his quitting the society of Garrick and his
actresses, and his reason for it; his dining with Wilkes, and his kindness
to Goldsmith; his sitting with the young ladies on his knee at the Mitre,
to give them good advice, in which situation, if not explained, he might
be taken for Falstaff; and last and noblest, his carrying the unfortunate
victim of disease and dissipation on his back up through Fleet Street, (an
act which realises the parable of the good Samaritan)--all these, and
innumerable others, endear him to the reader, and must be remembered to
his lasting honour. He had faults, but they lie buried with him. He had
his prejudices and his intolerant feelings; but he suffered enough in the
conflict of his own mind with them. For if no man can be happy in the free
exercise of his reason, no wise man can be happy without it. His were not
time-serving, heartless, hypocritical prejudices; but deep, inwoven, not
to be rooted out but with life a