Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/140

136 speaking of this to Boswell, ‘but very kind to me. If you call a dog, I shall love him.’ In the Life of Walsh he attributes a similar gratitude to Pope: ‘The kindnesses which are first experienced are seldom forgotten. Pope always retained a grateful memory of Walsh’s notice, and mentioned him in one of his latter pieces among those that had encouraged his juvenile studies:

This is allowing too much to Pope, whose mention of Walsh, like his mention of his own mother, is artfully contrived to heighten his proper reputation for genius and virtue.

Johnson’s very natural tendency to interpret the lives and characters of other poets by the likeness of his own is explicitly noted by Boswell. ‘In drawing Dryden’s character,’ says Boswell, ‘Johnson has given, I suppose unintentionally, some touches of his own.’ It is not possible to identify precisely the passages that were in Boswell’s mind; but no doubt these are some of them: ‘He appears to have had a mind very comprehensive by nature, and much enriched with acquired knowledge. The power that predominated in his intellectual operations was rather strong reason than quick sensibility… With the simple and elemental passions, as they spring separate in the mind, he seems not much acquainted, and seldom describes them but as they are complicated by the various relations of society and confused in the tumults and agitations of life… When once he had engaged himself in disputation, thoughts flowed in on either side: he was now no longer at a loss; he had always objections and solutions at command… What