Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies II.djvu/9

 ��APOPHTHEGMS, SENTIMENTS

��DR. JOHNSON used to say, that where secrecy or mystery began, vice or roguery was not far off; and that he leads in general an ill life, who stands in fear of no man's observation 2.

When a friend of his who had not been very lucky in his first wife, married a second, he said Alas ! another instance of the triumph of hope over experience 3.

Of Sheridan's writings on Elocution, he said, they were a continual renovation of hope, and an unvaried succession of disappointments 4.

��1 From the eleventh volume of Sir John Hawkins's edition of Johnson's

Works (pp. 195-216), published in 1787-9, in 13 vols. 8vo. Many of the 'Apophthegms,' c., there in cluded, which had been copied from Steevens's Collection in the Euro pean Magazine for January, 1875, will be found post, under Anecdotes by George Steevens. One or two, moreover, which in like manner were borrowed from Seward, will be found post, under his name.

2 See ante, i. 326, for his dislike of * mysteriousness in trifles,' and post, p. 8, for ' the vices of retire ment. 3 Boswell, recounting how Johnson in the Oxford post-coach his affairs,' continues : * Indeed his
 * talked without reserve of the state of

VOL. II.

��openness with people at a first inter view was remarkable.' Life, iv. 284. See/0j/, in Seward's Anecdotes.

3 Life, ii. 128. The Lord Chan cellor Audley, in his speech in par liament on Henry VIII's troubles in his two first marriages, said : ' What man of middle condition would not this deter from marrying a third time ? Yet this our most excellent prince again condescends to contract matrimony.' Part. Hist. i. 528.

4 For Johnson's contempt of Sheri dan's oratory see Life, i. 453, iv.

222.

In the Life, ii. 122, this anecdote is thus recorded on the authority of Dr. Maxwell : * Of a certain player he remarked, that his conversation usually threatened and announced B He

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