Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/57

Rh the veins of his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible.’ No doubt Boswell had seen Johnson on one or more occasions, as he here describes him. Hawkins says, ‘It was, at no time of his life, pleasing to see him at a meal.’ On the other hand, Bishop Percy, under whose roof Johnson lived for many weeks, says that Boswell’s description is extremely exaggerated. ‘He ate heartily, having a good appetite, but not with the voraciousness described by Mr. Boswell; all whose extravagant accounts must be read with caution and abatement.’ And Richard Cumberland says, ‘He fed heartily but not voraciously, and was extremely courteous in his commendations of any dish that pleased his palate.’ In the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides Boswell himself had remarked, ‘I observed that he was disgusted whenever he met with coarse manners.’

These quotations make it plain that here is a question of degree, to be determined ‘not dogmatically, but deliberately.’ It is perhaps fair to conclude that Johnson ate zealously, and with conviction. The fervour of his temper expressed itself in a hundred ways, and this no doubt was one of them. Boswell’s account is probably a little exaggerated; the most vivid of his memories of Johnson at table is imposed upon the reader as if it were a daily experience. Then came Macaulay; he seized upon the most picturesque of Boswell’s scattered descriptive phrases, joined them in a single sentence, and heightened the picture out of all human recognition. ‘The old philosopher is still among us, in the brown coat with the metal buttons and the shirt which ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, drumming with his fingers, tearing his meat like a tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans.’