Talking of drinking wine,he said,'I did not leave off wine,because I could not bear it;I have drunk three bottles of port without being the worse for it.University College has witnessed this.'BOSWELL.'Why,then,Sir,did you leave it off?'JOHNSON.
'Why,Sir,because it is so much better for a man to be sure that he is never to be intoxicated,never to lose the power over himself.I shall not begin to drink wine again,till I grow old,and want it.'BOSWELL.'I think,Sir,you once said to me,that not to drink wine was a great deduction from life.'JOHNSON.'It is a diminution of pleasure,to be sure;but I do not say a diminution of happiness.There is more happiness in being rational.'BOSWELL.'But if we could have pleasure always,should not we be happy?The greatest part of men would compound for pleasure.'JOHNSON.'Supposing we could have pleasure always,an intellectual man would not compound for it.The greatest part of men would compound,because the greatest part of men are gross.'
I mentioned to him that I had become very weary in a company where I heard not a single intellectual sentence,except that 'a man who had been settled ten years in Minorca was become a much inferiour man to what he was in London,because a man's mind grows narrow in a narrow place.'JOHNSON.'A man's mind grows narrow in a narrow place,whose mind is enlarged only because he has lived in a large place:but what is got by books and thinking is preserved in a narrow place as well as in a large place.A man cannot know modes of life as well in Minorca as in London;but he may study mathematicks as well in Minorca.'BOSWELL.'I don't know,Sir:if you had remained ten years in the Isle of Col,you would not have been the man that you now are.'JOHNSON.'Yes,Sir,if I had been there from fifteen to twenty-five;but not if from twenty-five to thirty-five.'BOSWELL.'I own,Sir,the spirits which I have in London make me do every thing with more readiness and vigour.Ican talk twice as much in London as any where else.'
Of Goldsmith he said,'He was not an agreeable companion,for he talked always for fame.A man who does so never can be pleasing.
The man who talks to unburthen his mind is the man to delight you.
An eminent friend of ours is not so agreeable as the variety of his knowledge would otherwise make him,because he talks partly from ostentation.'
Soon after our arrival at Thrale's,I heard one of the maids calling eagerly on another,to go to Dr.Johnson.I wondered what this could mean.I afterwards learnt,that it was to give her a Bible,which he had brought from London as a present to her.
He was for a considerable time occupied in reading Memoires de Fontenelle,leaning and swinging upon the low gate into the court,without his hat.
At dinner,Mrs.Thrale expressed a wish to go and see Scotland.
JOHNSON.'Seeing Scotland,Madam,is only seeing a worse England.
It is seeing the flower gradually fade away to the naked stalk.
Seeing the Hebrides,indeed,is seeing quite a different scene.'
On Thursday,April 9,I dined with him at Sir Joshua Reynolds's,with the Bishop of St.Asaph,(Dr.Shipley,)Mr.Allan Ramsay,Mr.
Gibbon,Mr.Cambridge,and Mr.Langton.
Goldsmith being mentioned,Johnson observed,that it was long before his merit came to be acknowledged.That he once complained to him,in ludicrous terms of distress,'Whenever I write any thing,the publick MAKE A POINT to know nothing about it:'but that his Traveller brought him into high reputation.LANGTON.'There is not one bad line in that poem;not one of Dryden's careless verses.SIR JOSHUA.'I was glad to hear Charles Fox say,it was one of the finest poems in the English language.'LANGTON.'Why was you glad?You surely had no doubt of this before.'JOHNSON.
'No;the merit of The Traveller is so well established,that Mr.
Fox's praise cannot augment it,nor his censure diminish it.'SIRJOSHUA.'But his friends may suspect they had too great a partiality for him.'JOHNSON.Nay,Sir,the partiality of his friends was always against him.It was with difficulty we could give him a hearing.Goldsmith had no settled notions upon any subject;so he talked always at random.It seemed to be his intention to blurt out whatever was in his mind,and see what would become of it.He was angry too,when catched in an absurdity;but it did not prevent him from falling into another the next minute.
I remember Chamier,after talking with him for some time,said,"Well,I do believe he wrote this poem himself:and,let me tell you,that is believing a great deal."Chamier once asked him,what he meant by slow,the last word in the first line of The Traveller,"Remote,unfriended,melancholy,slow."Did he mean tardiness of locomotion?Goldsmith,who would say something without consideration,answered,"Yes."I was sitting by,and said,"No,Sir;you do not mean tardiness of locomotion;you mean,that sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude."Chamier believed then that I had written the line as much as if he had seen me write it.Goldsmith,however,was a man,who,whatever he wrote,did it better than any other man could do.
He deserved a place in Westminster-Abbey,and every year he lived,would have deserved it better.He had,indeed,been at no pains to fill his mind with knowledge.He transplanted it from one place to another;and it did not settle in his mind;so he could not tell what was in his own books.'
We talked of living in the country.JOHNSON.'No wise man will go to live in the country,unless he has something to do which can be better done in the country.For instance:if he is to shut himself up for a year to study a science,it is better to look out to the fields,than to an opposite wall.Then,if a man walks out in the country,there is nobody to keep him from walking in again:but if a man walks out in London,he is not sure when he shall walk in again.A great city is,to be sure,the school for studying life;and "The proper study of mankind is man,"as Pope observes.'
