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 228 Sir Joshua Reynolds on Johnson's Character.

��He fought on every occasion as if his whole reputation depended upon the victory of the minute, and he fought with all the weapons. If he was foiled in argument he had recourse to abuse and rudeness *. That he was not thus strenuous for victory with his intimates in tete-a-tete conversations when there were no witnesses, may be easily believed 2. Indeed, had his conduct been to them the same as he exhibited to the public, his friends could never have entertained that love and affection for him which they all feel and profess for his memory.

But what appears extraordinary is that a man who so well saw, himself, the folly of this ambition of shining, of speaking, or of acting always according to the character [he] imagined [he] possessed in the world, should produce himself the greatest


 * ample of a contrary conduct.

Were I to write the Life of Dr. Johnson I would labour this point, to separate his conduct that proceeded from his passions, and what proceeded from his reason, from his natural disposition

jen in his quiet hours 3.

��him, and they talked of Tail's Hus bandry. Dri Campbell said some thing. Dr. Johnson began to dis pute it. " Come, (said Dr. Camp bell,) we do not want to get the better of one another: we want to encrease each other's ideas." Dr. Johnson took it in good part, and the conversation then went on coolly and instructively.' Life, v. 324.

Cobbett, on Nov. 20, 1821, went on ' a sort of pilgrimage to see the Farm of Tull at Shalborne in Berkshire. . . where Tull wrote that book which does so much honour to his memory.' Rural Rides, ed. 1893, i. 43, 5.

1 See ante, i. 327 n., for his 're course to abuse and rudeness ' in arguing with Reynolds one day at dinner about wine. See also ante, i- 453-

��2 'When the meeting was over, Mr. Steevens observed, that the ques tion between him and his friend had been agitated with rather too much warmth. " It may be so, Sir, (re plied the Doctor,) for Burke and I should have been of one opinion if we had had no audience." ' The dispute had been about 'the tendency of some part of the defence ' which Baretti was to make on his trial for his life. Life, iv. 324.

3 ' If you come to settle here,' he said to Bos well, ' we will have one day in the week on which we will meet by ourselves. That is the hap piest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm quiet interchange of sentiments.' Ib. ii. 359.

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