Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/305

 Anecdotes.

��when Mrs. Montague shewed him some China plates which had once belonged to Queen Elizabeth, he told her, ' that they had no reason to be ashamed of their present possessor, who was so little inferior to the first V I likewise remember that he pro nounced one day at my house a most lofty panegyric upon Jones the Orientalist, who seemed little pleased with the praise, for what cause I know not 2. He was not at all offended, when comparing all our acquaintance to some animal or other, we pitched upon the elephant for his resemblance, adding that the proboscis of that creature was like his mind most exactly, strong to buffet even the tyger, and pliable to pick up even the pin. /The truth is, Mr. Johnson was often good-humouredly willing to / join in childish amusements, and hated to be left out of any I innocent merriment that was going forward. Mr. Murphy always I said, he was incomparable at buffoonery ; and I verily think, if he had had good eyes, and a form less inflexible, he would have made an admirable mimic 3.

He certainly rode on Mr. Thrale's old hunter with a good

��man with whom if you should quar- rel, you would find the most dif- ficulty how to abuse.' Life, v. 102.

1 Mrs. Montagu's name was Eliza- beth. For Johnson's praise of her conversation see ib. iv. 275, and for her pretence to learning, ib. iii. 244. It was mainly by reason of her wealth that she was famous for her wit and writings. Johnson said of her : ' Mrs. Montagu has dropped me. Now, Sir, there are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.' Ib. iv. 73.

To her might be applied what Macaulay wrote of Rogers, far in- ferior to him though she was as a writer. ' That such men as Lord Granville, Lord Holland, Hob house, Lord Byron, and others of high rank in intellect, should place Rogers, as they do, above Southey, Moore, and even Scott himself, is what I

��cannot conceive. But this comes of being in the highest society of Lon- don. What Lady Jane Granville [in Miss Edgeworth's Patronage\ called the Patronage of Fashion can do as much for a middling poet as for a plain girl like Miss Arabella Fal- coner.' Trevelyan's Macaulay, ed. 1877, i. 219.

2 Sir William Jones was famous for his modesty, if we can trust Dean Barnard's line :

Greek.' Life, iv. 433.
 * Jones teach me modesty and

3 ' Dr. Johnson has more fun, and comical humour, and love of non- sense about him than almost any- body I ever saw.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 204. ' Gesticular mimicry and buffoonery Johnson hated, and would often huff Garrick for exercis- ing it in his presence.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 386. See ante, p. 269, post, p. 345.

firmness

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