Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/509

 Many of Johnson's thoughts on conduct and character are epigrammatic in form, and felicitous. For example: "Gratitude is a species of Justice." "Want of tenderness is want of parts, and is no less a proof of stupidity than depravity." "Men are wrong for want of sense; but they are wrong by halves for want of spirit." When he is excusing the eulogists of Halifax's poetry, he observes that unmerited praise is not necessarily flattery, since it may be swayed by affection, and neatly puts the case thus:—"Very near to admiration is the wish to admire." It befell Johnson, in the course of his long dictatorship, to administer many a rebuff, and some of these rebuffs have no more to do with wit than a knock-down blow with skill on the violin; but some of them are of a finer order. There was a pertinacious visitor, of little education, who harassed Johnson, and a friend ventured to plead that this gentleman was at least desirous of amending his ignorance. "Sir," said Johnson, "his ignorance is so great that I am afraid to show him the bottom of it." Then there is a story preserved, not by Boswell, but by Hannah More. Mrs Brooke, a novelist and dramatist, had written a tragedy called the Siege of Sinope, and pressed Johnson to look over it. After some evasion, and finally a refusal, he suggested that she herself was entirely competent to revise it. "But, Sir," said the lady, "I have no time: I have already so many irons in the fire." "Why, then, Madam," said Johnson, "the best thing I can advise you to do is to put your tragedy along with your irons."