Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/350

 332 A necdotes.

��instances chiefly to shew that the fears of death itself could not suppress his wit, his sagacity, or his temptation to sudden resentment.

Mr. Johnson did not like that his friends should bring their manuscripts for him to read, and he liked still less to read them when they were brought : sometimes however when he could not refuse he would take the play or poem, or whatever it was, and give the people his opinion from some one page that he had peeped into. A gentleman carried him his tragedy, which, because he loved the author x, Johnson took, and it lay about our rooms some time. What answer did you give your friend, Sir ? said I, after the book had been called for. ' I told him (replied he), that there was too much Tig and Tirry in it.' Seeing me laugh most violently, ' Why what would'st have, child ? ' (said he.) I looked at nothing but the dramatis [personse], and there was Tz^ranes and TVr/dates, or Teribazus, or such stuff 2. A man can tell but what he knows, and I never got any further than the first page. Alas, Madam ! (continued he) how few books are there of which one ever can possibly arrive at the last page ! Was there ever yet any thing written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe 3, and the Pilgrim's Progress 4 ? ' After Homer's Iliad,

1 Arthur Murphy, whom Johnson through several editions, and please
 * very much loved.' Life, ii. 127. as many readers as Dryden and

2 In Murphy's tragedy of Zenobia Tillotson.' The Whig Examiner, two of the characters are Teribazus No. 2.

and Tigranes. 1720. Swift. ' I have been better

3 Smollett describes the author entertained and more informed by ' as one Daniel de Foe, a scurrilous a few pages in the Pilgrim 's Pro- party-writer, in very little estima- gress than by a long discourse upon tion.' History of England ', ed. 1800, the will and the intellect and simple i. 420. or complex ideas.' A Letter to a

4 Ante, p. 319. For Johnson's Young Clergyman. Works, ed. 1 803, admiration of Bunyan see Life, ii. viii. 20.

238. I have collected the following 1741. Gentleman's Magazine, p.

instances of the estimate set on the 488. ' Take it all together there

Pilgrim's Progress last century. never was an Allegory better de-

1710. Addison. ' I never yet knew signed or better supported.'

an author that had not his admirers. 1758. Mrs. Montagu. ' Bunyan and

Bunyan and Quarles have passed Ouarles, those classics of the artificers

Mr.

�� �