52 Anecdotes by
��The Poem of the Graces became the topic ; Boswell asked if he had never been under the hands of a dancing master x . * Aye, and a dancing mistress too/ says the Doctor, ' but I own to you I never took a lesson but one or two, my blind eyes showed me I could never make a proficiency.' Boswell led him to give his opinion of Gray, he said there were but two good stanzas in all lis works, viz., the elegy 2 . Boswell desirous of eliciting his opinion upon too many subjects, as he thought, he rose up and took his hat 3 . This was not noticed by anybody as it was nine o'clock, but after we got into Mr. Langton's coach, who gave us a set down, he said, ' Boswell's conversation consists entirely in asking questions, and it is extremely offensive Y we
fended it upon Boswell's eagerness to hear the Doctor speak.
Talking of suicide 5 , Boswell took up the defence for argument's sake, and the Doctor said that some cases were more excusable than others, but if it were excusable, it should be the last resource; 'for instance, 5 says he, 'if a man is distressed in circumstances, (as in the case I mentioned of Denny) he ought to fly his country.' ' How can he fly,' says Boswell, ' if he has wife and children?' 'What Sir/ says the Doctor, shaking his head as if to promote the fermentation of his wit, ' doth not a man fly from his wife and children if he murders himself?'
APRIL i6th. Dined with Archdeacon Congreve, my Lord Pri mate 6 came there in the evening. He asked me sneeringly if I had seen the lions 7 . I told him I had neither seen them nor the crown, nor the jewels, nor the whispering-gallery at St. Paul's. The conversation turned upon other things, and came round to his picture by Reynolds, which led on talk of Sir Joshua and other great artists, and without any force, I introduced something of Johnson. ' What/ says he, ' do you know him ?' ' Yes my Lord I do, and Barretti [sic], and several others, whom I have been
1 Life, iv. 79. 4 < Questioning (said Johnson) is
2 This he had said to Boswell not the mode of conversation among about a fortnight earlier. Ib. ii. gentlemen.' Ib. ii. 472. See also 328. For two 'very good lines ' in ib. iii. 57, 268 ; iv. 439.
the Bard see ib. i. 403. 5 Ib. iv. 225 ; v. 54.
3 * He was not much in the humour 6 The Archbishop of Armagh, of talking.' Ib. ii. 352. 7 In the Tower.
fortunate
�� �
