Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/187

 Anecdotes.

��that did justice to my good breeding ; and you may observe that I am well-bred to a degree of needless scrupulosity *. No man, (continued he, not observing the amazement of his hearers) no man is so cautious not to interrupt another; no man thinks it so necessary to appear attentive when others are speaking 2 ; no man so steadily refuses preference to himself, or so willingly bestows it on another, as I do ; no body holds so strongly as I do the necessity of ceremony, and the ill effects which follow the breach of it : yet people think me rude ; but Barnard did me justice 3 .' Tis pity, said I, laughing, that he had not heard you compliment the Cambridge men after dinner to-day. 'Why (replied he) I was inclined to down 4 them sure enough ; but then a fellow deserves to be of Oxford that talks so.' I have heard him at other times relate how he used to sit in some

coffee-house there, and turn M 's C-r-ct-u-s into ridicule for

the diversion of himself and of chance comers-in. ' The Elf da (says he) was too exquisitely pretty ; I could make no fun out of that V When upon some occasions he would express his astonish-

��1 ' Every one,' says Lord Shaftes- bury, * thinks himself well-bred.' Characteristicks, ed. 1714, i. 65.

For instances of scrupulosity, see Life, iv. 5, n, 2, and Letters, ii. 144, n. I. Richardson in Sir Charles Grandison, ed. 1754, v. 85, 90, puts it into the mouth of Mr. Selby who was remark able for ' peculiarities of words.'

2 ' He encouraged others, particu larly young men, to speak, and paid a due attention to what they said.' Hawkins, p. 164.

' Bien e"couter et bien re"pondre est une des plus grandes choses qu'on puisse avoir dans la conversation.' La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, No.

139-

3 See post, p. 3 1 8. ' Every man of any education,' said Johnson, ' would rather be called a rascal than accused of deficiency in the graces.' Life, iii. 54. ' Sir,' said Johnson to Bos- well, ' I look upon myself as a very polite man.' 'And he was right,'

��is Boswell's comment, ' in a proper manly sense of the word.' Ib. v. 363. 'Theoretically,' writes Sir Walter Scott, * no man understood the rules of good breeding better than Dr. Johnson, or could act more exactly in conformity with them, when the high rank of those with whom he was in company for the time re quired that he should put the neces sary constraint upon himself.' Scott's Misc. Prose Works, ed. 1834, iii. 268.

4 See Life, iii. 335, where Johnson says : ' Robertson was in a mighty romantick humour, he talked of one whom he did not know; but I downed him with the King of Prussia.'

Percy says that Johnson's habit of depreciating Cambridge men 'was more affected than real.' Anderson's Johnson, ed. 1815, p. 486.

5 Boswell, who 'ever entertained a warm admiration' for Mason's

ment

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