Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies II.djvu/151

 Anecdotes by Miss Hawkins.

��1 He was adverse to departing from the common opinions and customs of the world, as conceiving them to have been founded on experience V

' He doubted whether there ever was a man who was not gratified by being told that he was liked by the women/

they were now performed with less pain than formerly, owing to modern improvements in science. " Yes, Sir," said he, " but if you will conceive a wedge placed with the broad end downwards," alluding to the drawing of a tooth, " no human power, nor angel, as / conceive, can extract that wedge without giving pain 2 ."
 * He was speaking of surgical operations. I suggested that

letter, and of professing to pour out miJs soul upon paper 3. Calling upon him shortly after the death of Lord Mansfield, and mentioning the event, he said, " Ah, Sir ! there was little learning and less virtue 4 ."' (Vol. i. p. 216.)
 * He spoke contemptuously of the habit of corresponding by

��son) will not make a Bentley or a Clarke. They are, however, in a certain degree advantageous.' Life, iv. 21.

1 See ante, i. 221.

2 When Johnson was suffering from a sarcocele (Life, iv. 239) he was attended by Percival Pott, one of the first surgeons of the day. When in 1749 Pott was appointed surgeon of St. Bartholomew's Hos pital ' the maxim Dolor medicina doloris still remained unrefuted. Mr. Pott's tutor treated with supercilious contempt the endeavours of his pupil to recommend a milder system. Mr. Pott lived to see those remains of barbarism set aside.' J. Earle's Life of Pott. ' Pott directed those who tried to bring back Dodd to life after his execution.' W 7 heatley's Wraxall's Memoirs, iv. 249.

3 ' It has been so long said as to be commonly believed, that the true characters of men may be found in

��their letters, and that he who writes to his friend lays his heart open before him. But the truth is that such were the simple friendships of the Golden Age, and are now the friendships only of children.' Works, viii. 314. See Letters, ii. 52, and Life, iv. 102.

4 Lord Mansfield died on March 20 ) !793> outliving Johnson by more than eight years. In spite of this gross blunder it is quite possible that Johnson thus spoke of him. Boswell says that 'Johnson entertained no exalted opinion of his Lordship's intellectual character. Talking of him to me one day he said : " It is wonderful, Sir, with how little real superiority of mind men can make an eminent figure in publick life."' Life, \v. 178. Smollett's praise of Mansfield perhaps implies that he had no great learning; for he says that he had ' an innate sagacity that saved the trouble of intense applica-

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