94 Extracts from
��devotional exercises, he was both intense and remiss x , and in the prosecution of his literary employments, dilatory and hasty, unwilling, as himself confessed, to work, and working with vigour and haste 2 .
His indolence, or rather the delight he took in reading and v reflection, rendered him averse to bodily exertions. He was ill made for riding, and took so little pleasure in it, that, as he once told me, he has fallen asleep on his horse 3 . Walking he seldom practised, perhaps for no better reason, than that it required the previous labour of dressing. In a word, mental occupation was his sole pleasure, and the knowledge he acquired in the pursuit of it he was ever ready to communicate : in which faculty he was not only excellent but expert ; for, as it is related of lord Bacon by one who knew him 4 , that * in all companies he appeared a good proficient, if not a master, in those arts enter tained for the subject of every one's discourse,' and that ' his most casual talk deserved to be written,' so it may be said of Johnson, that his conversation was ever suited to the profession, condition, and capacity of those with whom he talked 5 . (Page 164.)
Johnson, who before this time [1748 or 1749], together with \ his wife, had lived in obscurity, lodging at different houses in the courts and alleys in and about the Strand and Fleet street 6 , had, for the purpose of carrying on this arduous work [the Dictionary^ and being near the printers employed in it, taken a handsome house in Gough square 7 , and fitted up a room in it with desks and other accommodations for amanuenses, who, to the number of five or six, he kept constantly under his eye.
1 For his attendance at church, see 7 Ib. i. 188 ; Letters, i. 1 8. It was ante, i. 63, 81 ; Life, i. 67 ; iii. 401. in No. 17 that he lived.
2 Ante, i. 96. ' There is no city in Europe, I be-
3 For his fox-hunting, see ante, i. lieve, in which house-rent is dearer 288. than in London, and yet I know no
4 Works of Francis Osborn, Esq. ; capital in which a furnished apart- 8vo, 1673, p. 1 5 1. Note by Hawkins. ment can be hired so cheap.' Wealth
5 Life, iii. 337. of Nations, Bk. I. ch. 10, ed. 1811,
6 Also in Holborn. For the list of i. 161. his habitations, see ib. iii. 405.
An
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