at his Toryism expressed
itself in anything so like a chain of reasoning as this. As a rule, it
appears rather in those conversational sallies, so pleasantly
compounded of wrath, humour, and contempt, which are the most
remembered thing about him. It provides some of the most
characteristic; as the dry answer to Boswell who expressed his surprise
at having met a Staffordshire Whig, a being whom he had not supposed to
exist, "Sir, there are rascals in all countries"; or the answer Garrick
got when he asked him "Why did not you make me a Tory, when we lived so
much together?" "Why," said Johnson, pulling a heap of half-pence from
his pocket, "did not the King make these guineas?" Or the true story
he liked to tell of Boswell who, he said, "in the year 1745 was a fine
boy, wore a white cockade, and prayed for King James, till one of his
uncles gave him a shilling on condition that he should pray for King
George, which he accordingly did. So you see that _Whigs of all ages
are made the same way_." In the same vein is his pleasant good-bye to
Burke at Beaconsfield before the election of 1774. {145} "Farewell, my
dear sir, I wish you all the success which can possibly be wished
you--_by an honest man_." Even the fiercer outburst about Patriotism
(that is according to the meaning of the word in those days, the
pretence of preferring the interests of the people to those of the
Crown), "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," gains an added
piquancy from the fact that it was uttered at "The Club" under the
nominal though absentee chairmanship of Charles Fox, soon to be the
greatest of "patriots," and in the actual presence of Burke.

But as a rule the fiercest assaults were reserved for Presbyterians and
Dissenters in whom political and ecclesiastical iniquity were united.
When he was walking in the ruins of St. Andrews and some one asked
where John Knox was buried, he broke out "I hope in the highway. I
have been looking at his reformations." And he wished a dangerous
steeple not to be taken down, "for," said he, "it may fall on some of
the posterity of John Knox: and no great matter!" So when he and
Boswell went to the Episcopal church at Montrose he gave "a shilling
extraordinary" to the Clerk, saying, "He belongs to an honest church,"
and when Boswell rashly reminded him that Episcopalians were only
dissenters, that is, only _tolerated_, in Scotland, he brought down
upon {146} himself the crushing retort, "