degree of envy, not so much for the respect he received as for the manner of its being acquired. What fell into his lap unsought, I have been forced to claim,' and so on. In Boswell, Johnson remarks that Garrick had had applause 'dashed in his face, sounded in his ears, and went home every night with the plaudits of a thousand in his cranium. Then, Mr. Garrick did not find but made his way to the tables, the lives, and almost the bedchambers, of the great. If all this had happened to me, I should have had a couple of fellows with long poles walking before me, to knock down everybody that stood in the way.' Obviously the substance is the same; but Johnson's words, in passing through the medium of Reynolds's bland and decorous interpretation, have lost all the vivid concrete imagery that fixes them in our memory. Johnson's only recorded blush was on the occasion of having said something rude to Reynolds; and we can easily believe that the Reynolds atmosphere would soften and occasionally emasculate the pithy utterances of his friend. Reynolds's painted portraits of 'Blinking Sam' show a power of interpreting the outward appearance which no doubt indicates a keen perception of the character
