Anecdotes.
��The remembrance of what had passed in his own childhood, made Mr. Johnson very solicitous to preserve the felicity of children ; and when he had persuaded Dr. Sumner to remit the tasks usually given to fill up boys' time during the holidays, he rejoiced exceedingly in the success of his negociation, and told me that he had never ceased representing to all the eminent schoolmasters in England, the absurd tyranny of poisoning the hour of permitted pleasure, by keeping future misery before the children's eyes, and tempting them by bribery or falsehood to evade it. 'Bob Sumner (said he), however, I have at length prevailed upon : I know not indeed whether his tenderness was persuaded, or his reason convinced, but the effect will always be the same.' Poor Dr. Sumner died, however, before the next vacation x .
Mr. Johnson was of opinion, too, that young people should have positive not general rules given for their direction. ' My mother (said he) was always telling me that I did not behave myself properly ; that I should endeavour to learn behaviour , and such cant 2 : but when I replied, that she ought to tell me what to do, and what to avoid, her admonitions were commonly, for that time at least, at an end.'
��This, I fear, was however at best a momentary refuge, found out by perverseness. No man knew better than Johnson in how many nameless and numberless actions behavioiir consists : actions which can scarcely be reduced to rule, and which come under no description. Of these he retained so many very strange ones,
��1 Sumner was Head Master of Harrow School. He died of apo plexy in 1771 at the age of forty-one. Among his pupils were Dr. Parr, Sir William Jones, and R. B. Sheri dan. Field's Life of Parr, i. 16, 5 1, 58.
2 See Life, iv. 221, n. I, for in stances of Johnson's use of the word cant. To these I would add the fol lowing : ' It is pleasant to remark how soon Pope learnt the cant of an
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��author.' Works, viii. 238. * Addison was not a man on whom such cant of sensibility could make much impres sion.' Ib. p. 248. ' The Persons of the Drama were first enumerated with all the cant of the modern stage by Mr. Rowe.' Johnson's Shake speare, ii. 352. 'When he calls the girl his only heaven on earth he utters the common cant of lovers.' Ib. iii. 133.
that
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