Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/296

 278 Anecdotes.

��Mr. Johnson did not however give in to ridiculous refinements either of speculation or practice, or suffer himself to be deluded by specious appearances. * I have had dust thrown in my eyes too often (would he say), to be blinded so. Let us never con found matters of belief with matters of opinion.' Some one urged in his presence the preference of hope to possession ; and as I remember, produced an Italian sonnet on the subject. * Let us not (cries Johnson) amuse ourselves with subtleties and son nets, when speaking about hope, which is the follower of faith and the precursor of eternity x ; but if you only mean those air- built hopes which to-day excites and to-morrow will destroy, let us talk away, and remember that we only talk of the pleasures of hope ; we feel those of possession, and no man in his senses would change the last for the first : such hope is a mere bubble, that by a gentle breath may be blown to what size you will almost, but a rough blast bursts it at once. Hope is an amuse ment rather than a good, and adapted to none but very tranquil minds V The truth is, Mr. Johnson hated what we call unprofit able chat ; and to a gentleman who had disserted some time about the natural history of the mouse ' I wonder what such a one would have said (cried Johnson), if he had ever had the luck to see a lion 3 ! '

I well remember that at Brighthelmstone once, when he was not present, Mr. Beauclerc asserted that he was afraid of spirits ; and I, who was secretly offended at the charge, asked him, the first opportunity I could find, What ground he had ever given to the world for such a report ? ' I can (replied he) recollect nothing nearer it, than my telling Dr. Lawrence many years ago, that a long time after my poor mother's death, I heard her

x * BOSWELL. " But may not a man 2 ' Hope,' he wrote, * is itself a

attain to such a degree of hope as species of happiness, and perhaps

not to be uneasy from the fear of the chief happiness which this world

death ?" JOHNSON. " A man may affords.' Ib. i. 368. See also ib. ii.

have such a degree of hope as to 350.

keep him quiet. You see I am not 3 Mrs. Piozzi, who had this anec-

quiet, from the vehemence with dote from Boswell, spoilt it in the

which I talk; but I do not despair." ' telling. Ib. ii. 194. Life, iv. 299.

voico

�� �