��his esteem between talents and erudition ; and when he saw a person eminent for literature, though wholly unconversable, it fretted him z . * Teaching such tonies 2 (said he to me one day), is like setting a lady's diamonds in lead, which only obscures the lustre of the stone, and makes the possessor ashamed on't.' Useful and what we call every-day knowledge had the most of his just praise. ' Let your boy learn arithmetic 3 , dear Madam,' was his advice to the mother of a rich young heir : ' he will not then be a prey to every rascal which this town swarms with : teach him the value of money, and how to reckon it ; ignorance to a wealthy lad of one-and-twenty, is only so much fat to a sick sheep : it just serves to call the rooks about him.'
And all that prey in' [on] vice or folly
Joy to see their quarry fly ; Here the gamester light and jolly.
There the lender grave and sly.
These improvise lines, making part of a long copy of verses which my regard for the youth on whose birth-day they were written obliges me to suppress lest they should give him pain 4 , shew a mind of surprising activity and warmth ; the more so as he was past seventy years of age when he composed them : but nothing more certainly offended Mr. Johnson, than the idea of a man's faculties (mental ones I mean) decaying by time ; ' It is not true, Sir (would he say) ; what a man could once do, he would always do, unless indeed by dint of vicious indolence, and compliance with the nephews and nieces who crowd round an
1 Post, p. 289. 4 The youth was Sir John Lade.
2 Webster defines Tony as a sim- Ante, p. 213, n. 2, and Hayward's pleton. Piozzi, i. 78. Eight years later Mrs.
' In short, a Pattern and com- Piozzi published these lines in her
panion fit British Synonomy, i. 359, whence
For all the keeping Tonyes of Boswell copied them for the third
the Pit.' edition of the Life, iv. 412, n. 2. She
Dryden. Prologue to All For adds to the wonder by making them
Love, 1. 15. 'improvise.' Johnson wrote to her on
3 Writing to one of Mrs. Thrale's Aug. 8, 1780:' You have heard in daughters he says : 'Nothingamuses the papers how ... is come to age ; more harmlessly than computation, I have enclosed a short song of con- and nothing is oftener applicable to gratulation, which you must not real business or speculative enquiries.' show to anybody.' Letters, ii. 190. Letters, ii. 321. Szzpost, p. 295. See/^/, in Mr. Hoole's Anecdotes.
Old
�� �
