74 Anecdotes by Richard Cumberland.
hunger had reminded him that he must fill the sheet before he saw the table cloth. He might indeed have knocked down Osbourne for a blockhead, but he would not have knocked him down with a folio of his own writing x . He would perhaps have been the dictator of a club, and wherever he sat down to con versation, there must have been that splash of strong bold thought about him, that we. might still have had a collectanea after his death ; but of prose I guess not much, of works of labour none, of fancy perhaps something more, especially of poetry, which, under favour, I consider was not his tower of strength. I think we should have had his Rasselas at all events, for he was likely enough to have written at Voltaire, and brought the question to the test, if infidelity is any aid to wit 2 . An orator he must have been; not improbably a parliamen tarian, and, if such, certainly an oppositionist, for he preferred to talk against the tide. He would indubitably have been no member of the Whig Club, no partisan of Wilkes, no friend of Hume, no believer in Macpherson ; he would have put up prayers for early rising, and laid in bed all day, and with the most active resolutions possible been the most indolent mortal living. (Volume i. p. 353.)
Alas ! I am not fit to paint his character : nor is there need of it; Etiam mortuus loquitur* \ every man, who can buy a book, has bought a Boswell\ Johnson is known to all the reading world. I also knew him well, respected him highly, loved him sincerely: it was never my chance to see him in those moments of moroseness and ill humour, which are im puted to him, perhaps with truth, for who would slander him ? But I am not warranted by any experience of those humours to speak of him otherwise than of a friend, who always met me with kindness, and from whom I never separated without regret. When I sought his company he had no capricious excuses for withholding it, but lent himself to every invitation with cordiality, and brought good humour with him, that gave life to the circle
1 Ante, i. 304, 381. dide. Life, i. 342 ; Letters, i. 79 n.
2 Cumberland wrongly thought 3 * He being dead yet speaketh.' that Rasselas was an answer to Can- Heb. xi. 4.
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