Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/289

 Anecdotes.

��forgotten V When Churchill nettled him however, it is certain he felt the sting, or that poet's works would hardly have been left out of the edition. Of that however I have no right to

��1 Life, \\. 335 ; iii. 375 ; v. 273, 400.

Johnson, as Boswell believed, only once in his life replied to an attack. Ib. i. 314. To the instances of au thors who laid down this rule, given ib. ii. 61, n. 4, 1 would add the follow ing : * Silence or a negligent in difference has a deeper way of wounding than opposition ; because opposition proceeds from an anger that has a sort of generous sentiment for the adversary mingling along with it, while it shows that there is some esteem in your mind for him ; in short that you think him worth while to contest with : but silence, or a negligent indifference, proceeds from anger, mixed with a scorn that shows another he is thought by you too contemptible to be regarded.' The Spectator, No. 538.

' De quelque source que partent ces outrages, il est sur qu'un homme qui n'est attaque" que dans ses ecrits ne doit jamais r^pondre aux cri tiques ; car si elles sont bonnes, il n'a autre chose a faire qu'k se cor- riger ; et si elles sont mauvaises, elles meurent en naissant. Souve- nous-nous de la fable du Boccalini, "Un voyageur, dit-il, e"tait impor tune, dans son chemin, du bruit des cigales ; il s'arreta pour les tuer ; il n'en vint pas k bout, et ne fit que s'ecarter de sa route : il n'avait qu'k continuer paisiblement son voyage ; les cigales seraient mortes d'elles- memes au bout de huit jours.'" CEuvres de Voltaire, ed. 1819, ii.

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' Addison knew the policy of litera ture too well to make his enemy important by drawing the attention

��of the public upon a criticism which, though sometimes intemperate, was often irrefragable.' Johnson's Works, vii. 436. * If we can suppose Dryden vexed [by Prior and Montague's at tack] it would be hard to deny him sense enough to conceal his uneasi ness.' Ib. viii. 2.

Hume wrote in 1762 : - -' As I had fixed a resolution, in the beginning of my life, always to leave the public to judge between my adversaries and me, without making any reply, I must adhere inviolably to this reso lution.' Burton's Hume, ii. 118.

Sir Walter Scott wrote on Jan. 31, 1817: 'I considered always that, by subjecting myself to the irritability which much greater authors have felt on occasions of literary dispute, I should be laying in a plentiful stock of unhappiness for the rest of my life. I therefore made it a rule never to read the attacks made upon me.' Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, v. 187. A year later he wrote : ' I am so deeply fixed in the opinion that a man lowers his estimation in the public eye by engaging in such controversy, that since I have been dipped in ink I have suffered no personal attacks to provoke me to reply.' Ib. v. 301.

' I rejoice,' wrote Charles Darwin, ' that I have avoided controversies, and this I owe to Lyell, who many years ago strongly advised me never to get entangled in a controversy, as it rarely did any good and caused a miserable loss of time and temper.' Life of Charles Darwin, ed. 1887, i. 89. He only twice departed from his rule, and in one of the cases he afterwards regretted it. Ib. i. j 59, n. decide ;

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