Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies II.djvu/234

 ��Sir Joshua Reynolds on

��rough as winter ; to those who sought his love, as mild summer * many instances will readily occur to those who k him intimately, of the guard which he endeavoured always t< keep over himself.

The prejudices he had to countries did not extend to indi viduals. The chief prejudice in which he indulged himself w< against Scotland, though he had the most cordial friendship with individuals [of that country 2 ]. This he used to vindicate as a duty. In respect to Frenchmen he rather laughed at himseH but it was insurmountable 3. He considered every foreigner as a fool till they had convinced him of the contrary 4. Against the Irish he entertained no prejudice, he thought they united them selves very well with us 5 ; but the Scotch, when in England, united and made a party by employing only Scotch servants and Scotch tradesmen 6. He held it right for Englishmen to oppose a party against them.

This reasoning would have more weight if the numbers were equal. A small body in a larger has such great disadvantages that I fear are scarce counterbalanced by whatever little combination

��1 ' Lofty and sour to them that

lov'd him not,

But to those men that sought him sweet as summer.' Henry VIII, Act iv. sc. 2.

2 Ante, i. 427-30.

3 ' An eminent foreigner, when he was shewn the British Museum, was very troublesome with many absurd inquiries. " Now there, Sir, (said Johnson,) is the difference between an Englishman and a Frenchman. A Frenchman must be always talk ing, whether he knows anything of the matter or not ; an Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say." ' Life, iv. 14.

a violent tooth-ach, a Frenchman accosted him thus : Ah, Monsieur, 'vo^ls Studies trop? Ib. iv. 15.
 * He said, that once, when he had

In a note on the scene between Catherine and Alice in Henry V

��(Act iii. sc. 4) he says : ' Through out the whole scene there may be found French servility and French vanity.' In another note on Cataian in The Merry Wives of Windsor (Act ii. sc. 3) he says : ' To be a foreigner was always in England, and I suppose everywhere else, a reason of dislike.'

4 ' One evening at old Slaughter's coffee-house, when a number of foreigners were talking loud about little matters, he said, " Does not this confirm old Meynell's observation For any thing I see, foreigners are

fools."' Life, iv. 15.

5 Ante, i. 427 ; ii. 49 ; Life, ii. 242.

6 You are, to be sure, wonderfully free from that nationality,' said Gar- rick to Boswell ; ' but so it happens that you employ the only Scotch shoe-black in London.' Life, ii. 326. See also id. ii. 121, 307, n. 3.

they

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