��Anecdotes.
��taste begins, we almost always see that it ends in simplicity; the glutton finishes by losing his relish for any thing highly sauced, and calls for his boiled chicken at the close of many years spent in the search of dainties ; the connoisseurs are soon weary of Rubens x , and the critics of Lucan 2 ; and the refine ments of every kind heaped upon civil life, always sicken their possessors before the close of it.
At the age of two years Mr. Johnson was brought up to London by his mother, to be touched by Queen Anne for the scrophulous evil, which terribly afflicted his childhood, and left such marks as greatly disfigured a countenance naturally harsh and rugged, beside doing irreparable damage to the auricular organs, which never could perform their functions since I knew him ; and it was owing to that horrible disorder, too, that one eye was perfectly useless to him ; that defect, however, was not observable, the eyes looked both alike. As Mr. Johnson had an astonishing memory, I asked him, if he could remember Queen Anne at all ? ' He had (he said) a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds, and a long black hood 3 .'
The christening of his brother he remembered with all its circumstances, and said, his mother taught him to spell and pronounce the words little Natty, syllable by syllable, making him say it over in the evening to her husband and his guests. The trick which most parents play with their children, of shewing off their newly-acquired accomplishments, disgusted Mr. Johnson beyond expression ; he had been treated so himself, he said, till
1 Sir Joshua Reynolds, writing approving nothing but what comes
four years earlier than Mrs. Piozzi, from the Italian school.'
thus finishes }\\s Journey to Flanders 2 'Mrs. Thrale's learning,' said
and Holland'. ' To conclude, I will Johnson, ' is that of a school- boy in
repeat in favour of Rubens, what one of the lower forms.' Life, i. 494.
I have before said in regard to the The judgement passed by the critics
Dutch school, that those who can- on Lucan she had perhaps learnt
not see the extraordinary merit of this from Addison in the Guardian,
great painter either have a narrow Nos. 115, 119.
conception of the variety of art, or 3 Quoted in the Life, i. 43. are led away by the affectation of
he
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