APPRECIATIONS AND TESTIMONIA
My dear, dear Doctor Johnson! what a charming man you are!—Letter to Miss S. Burney, July 5th, 1778.
The last of the Tories . . . the bravest of the brave. . . . Few men on record have had a more merciful, tenderly affectionate nature than old Samuel. He was called the Bear; and did indeed too often look, and roar, like one; being forced to it in his own defence; yet within that shaggy exterior of his there beat a heart warm as a mother's, soft as a little child's. . . . Tears trickling down the granite rock: a soft well of Pity springs within!—Essays.
Johnson in the eighteenth century and as Man of Letters was one of such; and the bravest of the brave. . . . Who so will understand what it is to have a man's heart may find that since the time of John Milton no braver heart had beat in any English bosom than Samuel Johnson now bore.—Essays.
The names of many greater writers are inscribed on the walls of Westminster Abbey; but scarcely anyone lies there whose heart was more acutely responsive during life to the deepest and tenderest human emotions. In visiting that strange gathering of departed heroes and statesmen and philanthropists and poets, there are many
261
