Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies II.djvu/126

 n8 Extracts from

��i

��of a farm : he could describe, with great accuracy, the process of malting ; and, had necessity driven him to it, could have thatched a dwelling T. Of field recreations, such as hunting, setting, and shooting, he would discourse like a sportsman, though his personal defects rendered him, in a great measure, incapable of deriving pleasure from any such exercises.

But he had taken a very comprehensive view of human life and manners, and. that he was well acquainted with the views and pursuits of all classes and characters of men, his writings abundantly shew. This kind of knowledge he was ever desirous of increasing, even as he advanced in years : to gratify it, he was accessible to all comers, and yielded to the invitations of such of his friends as had residences in the country, to vary his course of living, and pass the pleasanter months of the year in the shades of obscurity.

In these visits, where there were children in the family, he took great delight in examining them as to their progress in learning, or, to make use of a term almost obsolete, of apposing them 2. To this purpose, I once heard him say, that in a visit to Mrs. Percy, who had the care of one of the young princes, at the queen's house 3, the prince of Wales 4 , being then a child, came into the room, and began to play about ; when Johnson, with his usual curiosity, took an opportunity of asking him what i books he was reading, and, in particular, enquired as to his knowledge of the Scriptures : the prince, in his answers, gave him great satisfaction ; and, as to the last, said, that part of his daily exercises was to read Ostervald 5. In many families into

1 In the Isle of Skye he described put grammatical questions to a the durability of a roof thatched with boy is called to pose him ; and we Lincolnshire reeds. Life, v. 263. In now use pose for puzzle' Johnson's his youth he had worked at book- Dictionary.

binding. Ante, i. 361. For his It is preserved in Apposition Day,

varied knowledge see Life, v. 215, the term still applied to Speech Day

246, 263. Much of it he had, no at St. Paul's School,

doubt, acquired from the books 3 Buckingham House, on the same

which he read for his Dictionary. site as the present Buckingham

For his ' talking ostentatiously' about Palace. Life, ii. 33 ; Letters, i. 414,

granulating gunpowder, see ib. v. 124. n. 2. See also ante, ii. 64.

2 ' This word is not now in use, 4 Afterwards George IV.

except that in some schools to 5 Burnet describes Ostervald as

which

�� �