if he be not better." And how admirably does Johnson demolish that fallacy to which English people are peculiarly prone—that a person of rough manners is therefore more likely to be honest—in this terse sentence:—"Honesty is not greater where elegance is less." "The difference between a well-bred and ill-bred man," he says, "is this; one immediately attracts your liking, the other your aversion. You love the one till you find reason to hate him; you hate the other till you find reason to love him." Johnson well knew how much of the happiness of life depends upon friendship, and all young people would do well to remember one of his counsels on this subject. "In youth," he says, "we are apt to be too rigorous in our expectations, and to suppose that the duties of life are to be performed with unfailing exactness and regularity; but in our progress through life we are forced to abate much of our demands, and to take friends such as we can find them, not as we would make them." "Every wise man,...when he remembers how often he fails in the observance of a cultivation of his best friends, is willing to suppose that his friends may in their turn neglect him without any intention to offend him." And so, when Boswell was hurt because Johnson had not lately written to him, Johnson says: "Do not fancy that an intermission of writing is a decay of kindness. No man is always in a disposition to write; nor has any man at all times something to say." Distrust of friends, he adds, is not only foolish; it is criminal, because it impairs
