Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/229

 Anecdotes.

��least I once did think, that a letter written by him to Mr. Barnard the King's librarian, when he was in Italy collecting books, contained some very particular advice to his friend to be on his guard against the seductions of the church of Rome x.

The settled aversion Dr. Johnson felt towards an infidel he expressed to all ranks, and at all times, without the smallest reserve 2 ; for though on common occasions he paid great deference to birth or title 3, yet his regard for truth and virtue never gave way to meaner considerations. We talked of a dead wit one evening, and somebody praised him 'Let us never praise talents so ill employed. Sir ; we foul our mouths by com mending such infidels' (said he). Allow him the lumitres at least, intreated one of the company ' I do allow him, Sir (replied

Johnson), just enough to light him to hell.' Of a Jamaica

gentleman, then lately dead 4 'He will not, whither he is now gone (said Johnson), find much difference, I believe, either in the climate or the company.' The Abbe Reynal probably re members that, being at the house of a common friend in London, the master of it approached Johnson with that gentleman so much celebrated in his hand, and this speech in his mouth : Will you permit me, Sir, to present to you the Abbe Reynal ? 'N0, Sir,' (replied the Doctor very loud) and suddenly turned away from them both 5.

1 ' You are going into a part of the infidel.' Of Hume he said something world divided, as it is said, between so rough that Boswell suppresses it. bigotry and atheism : such repre- Ib. v. 30. 'He talked with some dis- sentations are always hyperbolical, gust of Gibbon's ugliness.' Ib. iv. but there is certainly enough of both 73.

to alarm any mind solicitous for 3 ' I have great merit,' he said,

piety and truth ; let not the con- ' in being zealous for subordination

tempt of superstition precipitate you and the honours of birth, for I can

into infidelity, or the horror of in- hardly tell who was my grandfather.'

fidelity ensnare you in superstition.' Ib. ii. 261. Letters, i. 147. 4 Perhaps Lord Mayor Beckford.

2 See Life, i. 268 for his attack on Ib. iii. 76, 201.

that ' scoundrel and coward' Boling- 5 Hannah More (Memoirs, \. 394),

broke, and that ' beggarly Scotch- records the same story, adding that man' Mallet; and ii. 95 for his at- Johnson put his hands behind his tack on Foote, who, * if he be an back. Romilly, who had formed the infidel, is an infidel as a dog is an highest expectations of Raynal from

p 2 Though

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