Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/42

38 context, as they were suggested by the discussion in hand, they are rarer and more potent than any wit. Nothing that Johnson ever said could conceivably be coveted by George Selwyn, or Theodore Hook, or Douglas Jerrold. He retailed no anecdotes. To Lord Shelburne, who once asked him to repeat a story for the benefit of some who had not heard it, he replied, ‘Indeed, my lord, I will not. I told the circumstance first for my own amusement, but I will not be dragged in as story-teller to a company.’ Life was for him too short and serious (and, it might be added, too full of real delight) to be wasted in the recital of irrelevant jests. ‘A story,’ he said once, ‘is a specimen of human manners, and derives its sole value from its truth.’ Even its truth would not justify the recital unless it were a useful truth, apposite to the discourse, or fit for the need of the moment. He never cheapened life, nor depreciated company, by embellishing it with imported wit and wisdom, as musicians are called in to entertain those who have neither the will nor the power to entertain one another. He was a lover of company, and a lover does not value these aids to social pleasure. He was a moralist, a great expounder of general truths, yet it was he who said, ‘I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know than all the allegorical pictures they can show me in the world.’

Because all Johnson’s wisdom is vital, springing from the occasion, he is the first of all our great men dead whom we would choose to revive for the sake of his commentary on the events of our own age. Boswell loved to test his great man by devising new situations and multiplying occasions for judgement. Who would not wish to be the first to travel with Johnson in a