to Mrs. Thrale, he went even further. Dr. Barnard,
he said, was the only man who had ever done justice to his good
breeding; "and you may observe," he added, "that I am well-bred to a
degree of needless scrupulosity." He proceeded, according to Mrs.
Thrale, but the report a little taxes our faith, to claim the virtues
not only of respecting ceremony, but of never contradicting or
interrupting his hearers. It is rather odd that Dr. Barnard had once a
sharp altercation with Johnson, and avenged himself by a sarcastic copy
of verses in which, after professing to learn perfectness from different
friends, he says,--

Johnson shall teach me how to place,
In varied light, each borrow'd grace;
From him I'll learn to write;
Copy his clear familiar style,
And by the roughness of his file,
Grow, like himself, polite.

Johnson, on this as on many occasions, repented of the blow as soon as
it was struck, and sat down by Barnard, "literally smoothing down his
arms and knees," and beseeching pardon. Barnard accepted his apologies,
but went home and wrote his little copy of verses.

Johnson's shortcomings in civility were no doubt due, in part, to the
narrowness of his faculties of perception. He did not know, for he could
not see, that his uncouth gestures and slovenly dress were offensive;
and he was not so well able to observe others as to shake off the
manners contracted in Grub Street. It is hard to study a manual of
etiquette late in life, and for a man of Johnson's imperfect faculties
it was probably impossible. Errors of this kind were always pardonable,
and are now simply ludicrous. But Johnson often shocked his companions
by more indefensible conduct. He was irascible, overbearing, and, when
angry, vehement beyond all propriety. He was a "tremendous companion,"
said Garrick's brother; and men of gentle nature, like Charles Fox,
often shrank from his company, and perhaps exaggerated his brutality.

Johnson, who had long regarded conversation as the chief amusement, came
in later years to regard it as almost the chief employment of life; and
he had studied the art with the zeal of a man pursuing a favourite
hobby. He had always, as he told Sir Joshua Reynolds, made it a
principle to talk on all occasions as well as he could. He had thus
obtained a mastery over his weapons which made him one of the most
accomplished of conversational gladiators. He had one advantage which
has pretty well disappeared from m