��appear offensive to many, but those who knew he was too blind to discern the perfections of an art which applies itself imme diately to our eye-sight, must acknowledge he was not in the wrong.
He delighted no more in music than painting x ; he was almost as deaf as he was blind : travelling with Dr. Johnson was for these reasons tiresome enough. Mr. Thrale loved prospects, and was mortified that his friend could not enjoy the sight of those different dispositions of wood and water, hill and valley, that travelling through England and France affords a man. But when he wished to point them out to his com panion 2 : ' Never heed such nonsense,' would be the reply : a blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another : let us if we do talk, talk about something ; men and women are my subjects of enquiry; let us see how these differ from those we have left behind.'
When we were at Rouen together 3 , he took a great fancy to the Abbe Roffette, with whom he conversed about the destruction of the order of Jesuits, and condemned it loudly, as a blow to the general power of the church, and likely to be followed with many and dangerous innovations, which might at length become fatal to religion itself, and shake even the foundation of Christianity 4 . The gentleman seemed to wonder and delight in his conversation : the talk was all in Latin, which
��1 He said of music, ' it excites in sibility to nature, and/tfj-/, p. 323. my mind no ideas, and hinders 3 In September, 1775. Life, ii. me from contemplating my own.' 385.
Hawkins's /0/bw0w, p. 319. See also 4 The order was suppressed in
Life, ii. 409. France in 1 764, and generally in 1773.
2 The more a man likes scenery Penny Cyclopaedia, ed. 1839, xiii. the more he dislikes to have it pointed 113.
out to him. Johnson was not wholly Gibbon, during the alarm caused
insensible to scenery. In his Tour by the Reign of Terror, argued in
to Wales he describes how 'the way favour of the Inquisition at Lisbon,
lay through pleasant lanes, and over- and said he would not, at the present
looked a region beautifully diversified moment, give up even that old estab-
with trees and grass.' Ib. v. 439. lishment.' Gibbon's Misc. Works,
See ib. n. 2 for my note on his insen- i. 328.
both
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