ble to maintain.
I would rather have Chancery suits upon my hands than the cure of souls.
No, Sir, I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy life, nor do I envy
the clergyman who makes it an easy life.' Here taking himself up all
of a sudden, he exclaimed, 'O! Mr. Edwards! I'll convince you that I
recollect you. Do you remember our drinking together at an alehouse
near Pembroke gate? At that time, you told me of the Eton boy, who, when
verses on our SAVIOUR'S turning water into wine were prescribed as an
exercise, brought up a single line, which was highly admired,--

"Vidit et erubuit lympha pudica DEUM,"

and I told you of another fine line in Camden's Remains, an eulogy
upon one of our Kings, who was succeeded by his son, a prince of equal
merit:--

"Mira cano, Sol occubuit, nox nulla secuta est."'

* Johnson said to me afterwards, 'Sir, they respected me for
my literature: and yet it was not great but by comparison.
Sir, it is amazing how little literature there is in the
world.'--BOSWELL

EDWARDS. 'You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried too in my
time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was
always breaking in.'--Mr. Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Courtenay, Mr.
Malone, and, indeed, all the eminent men to whom I have mentioned this,
have thought it an exquisite trait of character. The truth is, that
philosophy, like religion, is too generally supposed to be hard and
severe, at least so grave as to exclude all gaiety.

EDWARDS. 'I have been twice married, Doctor. You, I suppose, have never
known what it was to have a wife.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I have known what it
was to have a wife, and (in a solemn, tender, faultering tone) I have
known what it was to LOSE A WIFE.--It had almost broke my heart.'

EDWARDS. 'How do you live, Sir? For my part, I must have my regular
meals, and a glass of good wine. I find I require it.' JOHNSON. 'I now
drink no wine, Sir. Early in life I drank wine: for many years I
drank none. I then for some years drank a great deal.' EDWARDS. 'Some
hogs-heads, I warrant you.' JOHNSON. 'I then had a severe illness,
and left it off, and I have never begun it again. I never felt any
difference upon myself from eating one thing rather than another,
nor from one kind of weather rather than another. There are people,
I believe, who feel a difference; but I am not one of them. And as to
regular meals, I have fasted from the Sunday's dinner to