Anecdotes.
��his toleration of boisterous mirth, and his content in the company of people whom one would have thought at first sight little calculated for his society. A rough fellow one day on such an occasion, a hatter by trade, seeing Mr. Johnson s beaver in a state of decay, seized it suddenly with one hand, and clapping him on the back with the other ; Ah, Master Johnson (says he), this is no time to be thinking about hats. ' No, no, Sir (replies our Doctor in a cheerful tone), hats are of no use now, as you say, except to throw up in the air and huzza with ; ' accompanying his words with the true election halloo x .
��But it was never against people of coarse life that his contempt was expressed, while poverty of sentiment in men who con sidered themselves to be company for the parlour 2 , as he called it, was what he would not bear. A very ignorant young fellow, who had plagued us all for nine or ten months, died at last con-
��entry:' 1754, April 15. Mr. Morton was chosen for Abingdon, after a long opposition of first Collington Esq. who left ye town and his Debts un paid. Next Thrale Esq., who not withstanding ye Superfluity of his money was rejected to ye Honour of Abingdon.'
1 Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale in 1780: 'The voters of the Borough are too proud and too little dependant to be solicited by deputies ; they expect the gratification of seeing the candidate bowing or curtseying be fore them. If you are proud they can be sullen.' Letters, ii. 153.
2 Johnson defines Drawingroom as the room in which company as sembles at court and Parlour as a room in houses on the first floor, elegantly furnished for reception or entertainment.
Mrs. Raine Ellis in a note on Miss Burney's Early Diary (ii. 157) says that ' Fanny does not seem to have said " drawing-room " until she went to Court, as she writes in her
��Windsor diary, "the drawing-room" as they call it here" Mrs. Delany, in 1755, speaks of her "dining-room, vulgarly so called" The old words were parlour for any sitting-room ; eating- or dining-parlour and cham ber or bed-chamber for rooms distinct from those of reception.' In New England parlour has not been sup planted by drawing-room.
' Upon a visit to me at a country lodging near Twickenham,' writes Dr. Maxwell, 'Johnson asked what sort of society I had there. I told him, but indifferent ; as they chiefly consisted of opulent traders, retired from business. He said, he never much liked that class of people ; "For, Sir (said he,) they have lost the civility of tradesmen, without acquiring the manners of gentle men.'" Life, ii. 120.
- The lower class of the gentry and
the higher of the mercantile world are in reality the worst-bred part of man kind.' Joseph Andrews, Bk. iii. ch. 3.
sumptive :
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