wandered in the streets
with Savage for nights together, unable between them to raise money
enough to pay for a bed. When his indomitable courage and industry at
length secured for him a footing in society, he still bore upon him
the scars of his early sorrow and struggles. He was by nature strong
and robust, and his experience made him unaccommodating and self-
asserting. When he was once asked why he was not invited to dine out
as Garrick was, he answered, "Because great lords and ladies do not
like to have their mouths stopped;" and Johnson was a notorious
mouth-stopper, though what he said was always worth listening to.

Johnson's companions spoke of him as "Ursa Major;" but, as Goldsmith
generously said of him, "No man alive has a more tender heart; he has
nothing of the bear about him but his skin." The kindliness of
Johnson's nature was shown on one occasion by the manner in which he
assisted a supposed lady in crossing Fleet street. He gave her his
arm and led her across, not observing that she was in liquor at the
time. But the spirit of the act was not the less kind on that
account. On the other hand, the conduct of the book-seller on whom
Johnson once called to solicit employment, and who, regarding his
athletic but uncouth person, told him he had better "go buy a
porter's knot and carry trunks," in howsoever bland tones the advice
might have been communicated, was simply brutal.

While captiousness of manner, and the habit of disputing and
contradicting everything said, is chilling and repulsive, the
opposite habit of assenting to, and sympathizing with, every
statement made, or emotion expressed, is almost equally disagreeable.
It is unmanly, and is felt to be dishonest. "It may seem difficult,"
says Richard Sharp, "to steer always between bluntness and plain-
dealing, between giving merited praise and lavishing indiscriminate
flattery; but it is very easy--good humor, kind heartedness and
perfect simplicity, being all that are requisite to do what is right
in the right way."

At the same time many are unpolite, not because they mean to be so,
but because they are awkward, and perhaps know no better. Thus, when
Gibbon had published the second and third volumes of his "Decline and
Fall," the Duke of Cumberland met him one day, and accosted him with,
"How do you do, Mr. Gibbon? I see you are always _at it_ in the old
way--_scribble, scribble, scribble_!" The duke probably intended to
pay the author a comp