Boswells Life of Johnson | Page 4

loved men and was ever
hungry for knowledge of them. 'Sir,' said he, 'I look upon every day lost
in which I do not make a new acquaintance.' And again: 'Why, Sir, I am
a man of the world. I live in the world, and I take, in some degree, the
color of the world as it moves along.' Thus he was a part of all that he
met, a central figure in his time, with whose opinion one must reckon
in considering any important matter of his day.
His love of London is but a part of his hunger for men. 'The happiness
of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it.'
'Why, Sir, you find no man at all intellectual who is willing to leave
London: No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for
there is in London all that life can afford.' As he loved London, so he
loved a tavern for its sociability. 'Sir, there is nothing which has yet
been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by
a good tavern.' 'A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity.'
Personal words are often upon his lips, such as 'love' and 'hate,' and vast
is the number, range, and variety of people who at one time or another
had been in some degree personally related with him, from Bet Flint
and his black servant Francis, to the adored Duchess of Devonshire and
the King himself. To no one who passed a word with him was he
personally indifferent. Even fools received his personal attention. Said
one: 'But I don't understand you, Sir.' 'Sir, I have found you an
argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding.' 'Sir, you are
irascible,' said Boswell; 'you have no patience with folly or absurdity.'
But it is in Johnson's capacity for friendship that his greatness is
specially revealed. 'Keep your friendships in good repair.' As the old
friends disappeared, new ones came to him. For Johnson seems never
to have sought out friends. He was not a common 'mixer.' He stooped
to no devices for the sake of popularity. He pours only scorn upon the

lack of mind and conviction which is necessary to him who is
everybody's friend.
His friendships included all classes and all ages. He was a great favorite
with children, and knew how to meet them, from little four-months-old
Veronica Boswell to his godchild Jane Langton. 'Sir,' said he, 'I love the
acquaintance of young people, . . . young men have more virtue than
old men; they have more generous sentiments in every respect.' At
sixty-eight he said: 'I value myself upon this, that there is nothing of the
old man in my conversation.' Upon women of all classes and ages he
exerts without trying a charm the consciousness of which would have
turned any head less constant than his own, and with their fulsome
adoration he was pleased none the less for perceiving its real value.
But the most important of his friendships developed between him and
such men of genius as Boswell, David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, Sir
Joshua Reynolds, and Edmund Burke. Johnson's genius left no fit
testimony of itself from his own hand. With all the greatness of his
mind he had no talent in sufficient measure by which fully to express
himself. He had no ear for music and no eye for painting, and the finest
qualities in the creations of Goldsmith were lost upon him. But his
genius found its talents in others, and through the talents of his personal
friends expressed itself as it were by proxy. They rubbed their minds
upon his, and he set in motion for them ideas which they might use. But
the intelligence of genius is profounder and more personal than mere
ideas. It has within it something energetic, expansive, propulsive from
mind to mind, perennial, yet steady and controlled; and it was with
such force that Johnson's almost superhuman personality inspired the
art of his friends. Of this they were in some degree aware. Reynolds
confessed that Johnson formed his mind, and 'brushed from it a great
deal of rubbish.' Gibbon called Johnson 'Reynolds' oracle.' In one of his
Discourses Sir Joshua, mindful no doubt of his own experience,
recommends that young artists seek the companionship of such a man
merely as a tonic to their art. Boswell often testifies to the stimulating
effect of Johnson's presence. Once he speaks of 'an animating blaze of
eloquence, which roused every intellectual power in me to the highest
pitch'; and again of the 'full glow' of Johnson's conversation, in which

he felt himself 'elevated as if brought into another state of being.' He
says that all members