The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [514]
After this tempest had subsided, I recollect the following particulars of his conversation: –
‘I am always for getting a boy forward in his learning; for that is a sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention; because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He’ll get better books afterwards.’
‘Mallet, I believe, never wrote a single line of his projected life of the Duke of Marlborough. He groped for materials; and thought of it, till he had exhausted his mind. Thus it sometimes happens that men entangle themselves in their own schemes.’
‘To be contradicted, in order to force you to talk, is mighty unpleasing. You shine, indeed; but it is by being ground.’
Of a gentleman who made some figure among the Literati of his time, (Mr. Fitzherbert,) he said, ‘What eminence he had was by a felicity of manner; he had no more learning than what he could not help.’
On Saturday, April 24, I dined with him at Mr. Beauclerk’s, with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Jones, (afterwards Sir William,) Mr. Langton, Mr. Steevens, Mr. Paradise, and Dr. Higgins. I mentioned that Mr. Wilkes had attacked Garrick to me, as a man who had no friend. ‘I believe he is right, Sir. $$ – He had friends, but no friend.a Garrick was so diffused, he had no man to whom he wished to unbosom himself. He found people always ready to applaud him, and that always for the same thing: so he saw life with great uniformity.’ I took upon me, for once, to fight with Goliath’s weapons, and play the sophist. – ‘Garrick did not need a friend, as he got from every body all he wanted. What is a friend? One who supports you and comforts you, while others do not. Friendship, you know, Sir, is the cordial drop, “to make the nauseous draught of life go down:”906 but if the draught be not nauseous, if it be all sweet, there is no occasion for that drop.’ JOHNSON. ‘Many men would not be content to live so. I hope I should not. They would wish to have an intimate friend, with whom they might compare minds, and cherish private virtues.’ One of the company mentioned Lord Chesterfield, as a man who had no friend. JOHNSON. ‘There were more materials to make friendship in Garrick, had he not been so diffused.’ Bo swell. ‘Garrick was pure gold, but beat out to thin leaf. Lord Chesterfield was tinsel.’ JOHNSON. ‘Garrick was a very good man, the cheerfullest man of his age; a decent liver in a profession which is supposed to give indulgence to licentiousness; and a man who gave away, freely, money acquired by himself. He began the world with a great hunger for money; the son of a half-pay officer, bred in a family, whose study was to make four-pence do as much as others made four-pence halfpenny do. But, when he had got money, he was very liberal.’ I presumed to animadvert on his eulogy on Garrick, in his Lives of the Poets. ‘You say, Sir, his death eclipsed the gaiety of nations.’ JOHNSON. ‘I could not have said more nor less. It is the truth; eclipsed, not extinguished; and his death did eclipse; it was like a storm.’ BOSWELL. ‘But why nations? Did his gaiety extend farther than his own nation?’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, some exaggeration must be allowed. Besides, nations may be said – if we allow