264 Anecdotes.
��does not know that she whimpers (says Johnson) ; when a door has creaked for a fortnight together, you may observe the master will scarcely give sixpence to get it oiled.'
Of another lady, more insipid than offensive, I once heard him say, ' She has some softness indeed, but so has a pillow.' And when one observed in reply, that her husband's fidelity and attachment were exemplary, notwithstanding this low account at which her perfections were rated * Why, Sir (cries the Doctor), being married to those sleepy-souled women, is just like playing at cards for nothing : no passion is excited, and the time is filled up. I do not however envy a fellow one of those honey-suckle wives for my part, as they are but creepers at best, and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about.'
For a lady of quality, since dead, who received us at her husband's seat in Wales with less attention than he had long been accustomed to, he had a rougher denunciation : ' That woman (cries Johnson) is like sour small-beer, the beverage of her table, and produce of the wretched country she lives in : like that, she could never have been a good thing, and even that bad thing is spoiled V This was in the same vein of asperity, and I believe with something like the same pro vocation, that he observed of a Scotch lady, ' that she resembled a dead nettle ; were she alive (said he), she would sting.'
Mr. Johnson's hatred of the Scotch is so well known 2 , and so many of his bans mots expressive of that hatred have been
1 This lady, according to Mrs. dice against both the country and the Piozzi's marginal note, was Lady people of Scotland must be allowed. Catherine Wynne. Hay ward' sPiozzi, But it was a prejudice of the head, and 1.293. Johnson recorded in his Tour not of the heart.' Ib. ii. 301. See to Wales on Aug. 21, 1774: 'We ib. ii. 306 for his justification of his went to dinner at Sir Thomas feelings. Reynolds says of him : Wynne's, the dinner mean, Sir 'The chief prejudice in which he Thomas civil, his Lady nothing.' indulged himself was against Scot- Life, v. 449. land, though he had the most cordial
2 ' That he was to some degree of friendship with individuals of that excess a true-born Englishman, so as country.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 460. to have entertained an undue preju-
already
�� �
