The Life of Samuel Johnson, vol 2 | Page 5

complying habits of the Continent; and I clearly
recognised in him, not without respect for his honest conscientious zeal,
the same indignant and sarcastical mode of treating every attempt to
unhinge or weaken good principles.
One evening when a young gentleman[39] teized him with an account
of the infidelity of his servant, who, he said, would not believe the
scriptures, because he could not read them in the original tongues, and
be sure that they were not invented. 'Why, foolish fellow, (said
Johnson,) has he any better authority for almost every thing that he
believes?' BOSWELL. 'Then the vulgar, Sir, never can know they are

right, but must submit themselves to the learned.' JOHNSON. 'To be
sure, Sir. The vulgar are the children of the State, and must be taught
like children[40].' BOSWELL. 'Then, Sir, a poor Turk must be a
Mahometan, just as a poor Englishman must be a Christian[41]?'
JOHNSON. 'Why, yes, Sir; and what then? This now is such stuff as I
used to talk to my mother, when I first began to think myself a clever
fellow; and she ought to have whipt me for it.'
Another evening Dr. Goldsmith and I called on him, with the hope of
prevailing on him to sup with us at the Mitre. We found him indisposed,
and resolved not to go abroad. 'Come then, (said Goldsmith,) we will
not go to the Mitre to-night, since we cannot have the big man[42] with
us.' Johnson then called for a bottle of port, of which Goldsmith and I
partook, while our friend, now a water-drinker, sat by us.
GOLDSMITH. 'I think, Mr. Johnson, you don't go near the theatres
now. You give yourself no more concern about a new play, than if you
had never had any thing to do with the stage.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir,
our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child's rattle, and
the old man does not care for the young man's whore.' GOLDSMITH.
'Nay, Sir, but your Muse was not a whore.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I do not
think she was. But as we advance in the journey of life, we drop some
of the things which have pleased us; whether it be that we are fatigued
and don't choose to carry so many things any farther, or that we find
other things which we like better.' BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, why don't you
give us something in some other way?' GOLDSMITH. 'Ay, Sir, we
have a claim upon you[43].' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, I am not obliged to
do any more. No man is obliged to do as much as he can do. A man is
to have part of his life to himself. If a soldier has fought a good many
campaigns, he is not to be blamed if he retires to ease and tranquillity.
A physician, who has practised long in a great city, may be excused if
he retires to a small town, and takes less practice. Now, Sir, the good I
can do by my conversation bears the same proportion to the good I can
do by my writings, that the practice of a physician, retired to a small
town, does to his practice in a great city[44].' BOSWELL. 'But I
wonder, Sir, you have not more pleasure in writing than in not writing.'
JOHNSON. 'Sir, you may wonder.'

He talked of making verses, and observed, 'The great difficulty is to
know when you have made good ones. When composing, I have
generally had them in my mind, perhaps fifty at a time, walking up and
down in my room; and then I have written them down, and often, from
laziness, have written only half lines. I have written a hundred lines in a
day. I remember I wrote a hundred lines of The Vanity of Human
Wishes in a day[45]. Doctor, (turning to Goldsmith,) I am not quite idle;
I have one line t'other day; but I made no more.'
GOLDSMITH. 'Let us hear it; we'll put a bad one to it..
JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, I have forgot it.[46]'
Such specimens of the easy and playful conversation of the great Dr.
Samuel Johnson are, I think, to be prized; as exhibiting the little
varieties of a mind so enlarged and so powerful when objects of
consequence required its exertions, and as giving us a minute
knowledge of his character and modes of thinking.
'To BENNET LANGTON, ESQ., AT LANGTON, NEAR SPILSBY,
LINCOLNSHIRE.
'DEAR SIR,
'What your friends have done, that from your departure till now nothing
has been heard of you, none of us are able to inform the rest; but as we
are all neglected alike, no one thinks himself entitled to the privilege of
complaint.
'I should have known nothing of you or of Langton, from the time that