Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/470

 452 Essay on

��man 1. Sooner than hear of the Punic war, he would be rude to the person that introduced the subject 2.

Johnson was born a logician ; one of those, to whom only books of logic are said to be of use. In consequence of his skill in that art, he loved argumentation. No man thought more profoundly, nor with such acute discernment. A fallacy could not stand before him : it was sure to be refuted by strength of reasoning, and a precision both in idea and expression almost unequalled. When he chose by apt illustration to place the argument of his adversary in a ludicrous light, one was almost mclined to think ridicule the test of truth 3. He was surprized to /be told, but it is certainly true, that, with great powers of mind, and humour were his shining talents 4. That he often argued for the sake of a triumph over his adversary, cannot be dis sembled 5. Dr. Rose 6, of Chiswick, has been heard to tell of a friend of his, who thanked him for introducing him to Dr. Johnson, as he had been convinced, in the course of a long dispute, that an opinion which he had embraced as a settled truth, was no better than a vulgar error. This being reported

therefore I esteem biography, as not ridicule the test of truth,' see

giving us what comes near to our- The Divine Legation, ed. 1765, i.

selves, what we can turn to use."' Dedication, p. 15.

Life, v. 79. ' The biographical part ' It is commonly said, and more

of literature,' he said, ' is what I love particularly by Lord Shaftesbury,

most.' Ib. i. 425. that ridicule is the best test of truth,

1 Pope, Essay on Man, ii. 2. for that it will not stick where it is

2 Ante, p. 202. not just. I deny it. A truth learned

3 'Truth, 'tis suppos'd, may bear in a certain light, and attacked in all Lights : and one of those prin- certain words, by men of wit and cipal Lights or natural Mediums by humour, may, and often doth, be- which Things are to be view'd, in come ridiculous, at least so far that order to a thorow Recognition, is the truth is only remembered and Ridicule it-self, or that Manner of repeated for the sake of the ridicule.' Proof by which we discern whatever Chesterfield's Letters, iii. 260.

is liable to just Raillery in any sub- ' Akenside adopted Shaftesbury's

ject Without Wit and Humour foolish assertion of the efficacy of

Reason can hardly have its proof, ridicule for the discovery of truth.'

or be distinguish'd.' Shaftesbury's Johnson's Works, viii. 470. Characteristics, ed. 1714, i. 61, 73. 4 Ante, p. 287.

For Warburton's argument that 5 Ante, p. 185. 'reason is the test of ridicule and 6 Ante, p. 419.

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