the tables of
those whom he called "the great." He was a clubbable man, and he drew
about him at the tavern a group of the most distinguished intellects of
the time: Edmund Burke, the orator and statesman; Oliver Goldsmith, Sir
Joshua Reynolds, the portrait painter, and David Garrick, the great
actor, who had been a pupil in Johnson's school, near Lichfield. Johnson
was the typical John Bull of the last century. His oddities, virtues,
and prejudices were thoroughly English. He hated Frenchmen, Scotchmen,
and Americans, and had a cockneyish attachment to London. He was a high
Tory, and an orthodox churchman; he loved a lord in the abstract, and
yet he asserted a sturdy independence against any lord in particular. He
was deeply religious, but had an abiding fear of death. He was burly in
person, and slovenly in dress, his shirt-frill always covered with
snuff. He was a great diner out, an inordinate tea-drinker, and a
voracious and untidy feeder. An inherited scrofula, which often took the
form of hypochondria and threatened to affect his brain, deprived him of
control over the muscles of his face. Boswell describes how his
features worked, how he snorted, grunted, whistled, and rolled about in
his chair when getting ready to speak. He records his minutest traits,
such as his habit of pocketing the orange peels at the club, and his
superstitious way of touching all the posts between his house and the
Mitre Tavern, going back to do it, if he skipped one by chance. Though
bearish in his manners and arrogant in dispute, especially when talking
"for victory," Johnson had a large and tender heart. He loved his ugly,
old wife--twenty-one years his senior--and he had his house full of
unfortunates--a blind woman, an invalid surgeon, a destitute widow, a
negro servant--whom he supported for many years, and bore with all their
ill-humors patiently.

Among Johnson's numerous writings the ones best entitled to remembrance
are, perhaps, his _Dictionary of the English Language_, 1755; his moral
tale, _Rasselas_, 1759; the introduction to his edition of Shakspere,
1765, and his _Lives of the Poets_, 1781. Johnson wrote a sonorous,
cadenced prose, full of big Latin words and balanced clauses. Here is a
sentence, for example, from his _Visit to the Hebrides_: "We were now
treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the
Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived
the benefits of knowledge and