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 ��one day, and he did not deny it, that when Murphy joked him the week before for having been so diligent of late between Dodd's sermon and Kelly's prologue, that Dr. Johnson replied, ' Why, Sir, when they come to me with a dead stay-maker and a dying parson, what can a man do 1 ?' He said, however, that ' he hated to give away literary performances, or even to sell them too cheaply 2 : the next generation shall not accuse me (added he) of beating down the price of literature : one hates, besides, ever to give that which one has been accustomed to sell ; would not you, Sir (turning to Mr. Thrale), rather give away money than porter ? '

Mr. Johnson had never, by his own account, been a close student 3, and used to advise young people never to be without a book in their pocket, to be read at bye-times when they had nothing else to do. ' It has been by that means (said he to a boy at our house one day) that all my knowledge has been gained, except what I have picked up by running about the world with my wits ready to observe, and my tongue ready to talk 4. A man is seldom in a humour to unlock his book-case,

1 In 1777 he wrote a Prologue to given it.' Ib. iii. in, n. i. See also A Word to the Wise by Hugh Kelly ib. i. 341, n. 3.

a play which had been damned in 3 ' Sir, in my early years I read

1770, but was revived for one night very hard. It is a sad reflection, but

for the benefit of the author's widow a true one, that I knew almost as

and children. Life, iii. 113. Kelly much at eighteen as I do now.' Ib.

served his apprenticeship to a Dublin i. 445. * I never knew a man who

stay-maker. Chalmers's Biog. Diet. studied hard. I conclude indeed

xix. 292. from the effects that some men have

The same summer Johnson wrote studied hard, as Bentley and Clarke.'

The Convict's Address to his tmhappy Ib. i. 71. He told the King that 'he

Brethren for Dr. Dodd, who was had read a great deal in the early

under sentence of death. Life,\\\. 141. part of his life, but having fallen into

2 'No man but a blockhead,' he ill-health he had not been able to said, ' ever wrote except for money.' read much compared with others.' Ib. iii. 19. He often sold his own Ib. ii. 36. Nevertheless Adam Smith works far too cheaply. For the told Boswell that ' Johnson knew Lives of the Poets he asked only two more books than any man alive.' hundred guineas. 'Had he asked Ib. i. 71.

one thousand, or even fifteen hundred 4 'He said to me,' writes Boswell, guineas,' writes Malone, ' the book- ' that before he wrote the Rambler sellers would doubtless have readily he had been " running about the

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