Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/238

 220 Anecdotes.

��It was on this principle that Johnson encouraged parents to carry their daughters early and much into company : * for what harm can be done before so many witnesses ? Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places T : no, 'tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can just sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared : he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain.' These notions Dr. Johnson carried so very far, that I have heard him say, ' if you would shut up any man with any woman, so as to make them derive their whole pleasure from each other, they would inevitably fall in love, as it is called, with each other; but at six months' end if you would throw them both into public life where they might change partners at pleasure, each would soon forget that fondness which mutual dependance, and the paucity of general amusement alone, had caused, and each would separately feel delighted by their release.'

In these opinions Rousseau apparently concurs with him exactly ; and Mr. Whitehead's poem called Variety 2, is written solely to elucidate this simple proposition. Prior likewise advises the husband to send his wife abroad, and let her see the

world as it really stands

Powder, and pocket-glass, and beau 3.

employed in writing or reading.' Life, public pleasures are generally less

i. 144, n. 2. See also ib. iii. 27, guilty than solitary ones.' Gold-

415. smith's Present State of Polite Learn-

1 To Sir Adam Fergusson, 'who ex- ing, ch. xii.

pressed some apprehension that the 2 This poem by William White- Pantheon would encourage luxury, head is given in Campbell's British " Sir (said Johnson), I am a great Poets, ed. 1845, p. 585. friend to public amusements, for they 3 ' Dear angry friend, what must keep people from vice." ' Ib. ii. 169. be done ?

' But whatever be the incentives to Is there no way? there is but

vice which are found at the theatre, one ;

Mr.

�� �