Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/53

Rh let it alone. It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time…. A man knows it must be so and submits. It will do him no good to whine.’ ‘I attempted,’ says Boswell, ‘to continue the conversation. He was so provoked, that he said, “Give us no more of this;” and was thrown into such a state of agitation that he expressed himself in a way that alarmed and distressed me; showed an impatience that I should leave him, and when I was going away, called to me sternly, “Don’t let us meet to-morrow.”’

Is it not easy to imagine the scene? The pleasant, excitable, insistent voice of Boswell,—‘With regard to death, Sir;’ Johnson’s brief, wise verdict, and dismissal of the topic; Boswell’s mosquito-like return, and Johnson’s outburst of wrath. It was not death that he feared; it was Boswell on death. He did not always shun the subject. His friend, John Hoole, tells how on November 30th, 1784, less than a fortnight before his death, ‘Frank bringing him a note, as he opened it he said an odd thought struck him, that one should receive no letters in the grave.’ Grim fancies on death were natural to him; tittle-tattle about it he could not bear.

If Boswell is sometimes all unconscious of the meaning of Johnson’s reproofs, so is Mrs. Thrale. Mrs. Thrale was a lively, feather-headed lady, with a good deal of natural wit, and a perfect confidence in the exercise of it. Boswell disliked her, as his most highly-favoured competitor, but it is impossible to read her Anecdotes without falling under the spell of her easy, irresponsible charm. There is no sufficient reason to challenge her good faith, but her code of truth is not severe, and many of the facts that she narrates become lies under her touch. So, in