��Minor A necdotes of Dr. Johnson.
��1 bolt up in the midst of a mixed company ; and, without any previous notice, fall upon his knees behind a chair, repeat the Lord's Prayer and then resume his seat at table. He has played this freak over and over, perhaps five or six times in the course of an evening 1 . It is not hypocrisy, but madness. Though an honest sort of man himself, he is always patronising scoundrels 2 . Savage, for instance, whom he so loudly praises, was but a worthless fellow 3 ; his pension of fifty pounds never lasted him longer than a few days 4 .' [For an anecdote which here follows about Savage, see ante, i. 372 n.~\
He was no admirer of the Rambler or the Idler, and hinted, that he had never been able to read them 5 . He was averse to the contest with America 6 , yet he spoke highly of Johnson's political pamphlets. But, above all, he was charmed with that respecting Falkland's Islands, as it displayed, in such forcible language, the madness of modern wars 7 .
��with him,' see Life, 111.331, and for the imaginary altercation, see ib. v. 369, n. 5. He was a member of the Literary Club. ' Smith, too, is now of our Club,' wrote Boswell. ' It has lost its select merit.' Ib. ii. 430, n. I.
1 There is, I am convinced, great exaggeration in this, not probably on Smith's part, who was one of the most truthful of men, but on his reporter's. See ib. i. 483 ; v. 307.
2 ' He was (writes Hawkins) one of the most quick-sighted men I ever knew in discovering the good and amiable qualities of others.' Ante, ii. 89.
1 It has always been found that those whose extensive knowledge makes them best acquainted with the general course of human actions are precisely those who take the most favourable view of them. The greatest observer and the most profound thinker is invariably the most lenient judge.' Buckle's History of Civiliza tion in England, ed. 1872, i. 221.
��3 Boswell writes of Savage as ' a man of whom it is difficult to speak impartially, without wondering that he was for some time the intimate companion of Johnson.' Life, i. 161. Johnson never 'loudly praises' Sa vage, but exhibits his bad as fully as his good qualities.
4 This Smith learnt from John son's Life, of Savage, Works, viii. 153. If improvidence makes a worth less fellow, then Goldsmith was among the most worthless.
5 There were those who could not read Adam Smith's great work. Miss Berry, who died in 1852, remem bered 'how Charles Fox used to wonder that people could make such a fuss about that dullest of new books Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations' H. Martineau's Auto biography, i. 438.
6 Hume's Letters to Strahan, pp. 292-3, 296, 299.
7 Life, ii. 134, n. 3. See also ante, ii. 16.
DUGALD
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