he never submitted to the tyranny of disease. The manliness
that rings through all he wrote made itself felt also in his life, and
we are not surprised to hear from Mrs. Thrale, in whose house he lived
so long, that he "required less attendance sick or well than ever I saw
any human creature." He could conquer disease and pain, but he never
affected stoic "braveries," about not finding them very actual and
disagreeable realities. In the same way, he never pretended not to
enjoy the universal pleasures, such as food and sleep. Boswell records
him as saying: "Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or
pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly
very studiously and very carefully, for I look upon it that he who does
not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else." This is not
particularly refined language, and Johnson's manners at the
dinner-table, where, until he had satisfied his appetite, he was
"totally absorbed in the business of the moment," were not always of a
nature to please refined people. But our present point is that they
were only an exaggeration of that sense of bodily realities which is
one of the things that has always helped to secure for him the plain
man's confidence. Throughout his life he kept his {20} feet firmly
based on the solid ground of fact. Human life, as it is actually and
visibly lived, was the subject of his study and conversation from first
to last. He always put fine-spun theories to mercilessly positive
tests such as the ordinary man understands and trusts at once, though
ordinary men have not the quickness or clearness of mind to apply them.
When people preached a theory to him he was apt to confute them simply
by applying it to practice. He supposed them to act upon it, and its
absurdity was demonstrated. One of his friends was Mrs. Macaulay, who
was a republican and affected doctrines of the equality of all men.
When Johnson was at her house one day he put on, as he says, "a very
grave countenance," and said to her: "Madam, I am now become a convert
to your way of thinking. I am convinced that all mankind are upon an
equal footing; and to give you an unquestionable proof, madam, that I
am in earnest, here is a very sensible, civil, well-behaved
fellow-citizen, your footman: I desire that he may be allowed to sit
down and dine with us." No wonder that, as he adds, "she has never
liked me since." To the political thinker, perhaps, such an a