��coffee I left the room. When in the evening however our com panions were returned to London, and Mr. Johnson and myself were left alone, with only our usual family about us, ' I did not quarrel with those Quaker fellows,' (said he, very seriously.) You did perfectly right, replied I ; for they gave you no cause of offence. .' No offence ! (returned he with an altered voice ;) and is it nothing then to sit whispering together when / am present, without ever directing their discourse towards me, or offering me a share in the conversation ? ' That was, because you frighted him who spoke first about those hot balls. * Why, Madam, if a creature is neither capable of giving dignity to falsehood, nor willing to remain contented with the truth, he deserves no better treatment/
Mr. Johnson's fixed incredulity of every thing he heard, and his little care to conceal that incredulity, was teizing enough to be sure x : and I saw Mr. Sharp 2 was pained exceedingly, when relating the history of a hurricane that happened about that time in the West Indies 3 , where, for aught I know, he had
1 ' Talking of Dr. Johnson's un- and human ; to 4ubt the second ; willingness to believe extraordinary and when obliged by unquestionable things, I ventured to say, " Sir, you testimony, ... to admit of something come near Hume's argument against extraordinary, to receive as little of it miracles, ' That it is more probable as is consistent with the known facts witnesses should lie, or be mistaken, and circumstances.' Hume's His- than that they should happen.'" tory of England, ed. 1773, iii. 143. Life, iii. 188. For Hume's argument 2 Perhaps Richard Sharpe, corn- see ib. i. 444, n. 3. monly known as ' Conversation
- The wisest and most experienced Sharpe.' H. C. Robinson (Diary, ii.
are generally the least credulous. 412) wrote of him in 1829: * In his
But the man scarce lives who is not room were five most interesting por-
more credulous than he ought to be. traits, all of men he knew Johnson,
. . . The natural disposition is always Burke and Reynolds, by Reynolds,
to believe. It is acquired wisdom Henderson by Gainsborough, and
and experience only that teach in- Mackintosh by Opie.' Among those
credulity, and they very seldom teach present at Johnson's Funeral was
it enough.' Adam Smith's Moral a Mr. Sharp. Letters, ii. 434. Samuel
Sentiments, ed. 1801, ii. 326. Sharp, the author of Letters from
'It is the business of history to Italy (Life, iii. 55), died in 1778.
distinguish between the miraculous 3 Probably the hurricane of Oct. 3,
and the marvellous', to reject the 1780, described in the Annual Regis-
first in all narrations merely profane ter, 1780, i. 292.
R a himself
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