Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/74

70 man and beast, it seems natural enough that he who surpassed other men in humanity should have surpassed them also in playfulness of mind.

Yet his fancy always plays about life, like the lightning about a ship. He made no empty jests, nor willingly listened to them. Once he made a pun—or rather, recognized that what he had said was a pun, and accepted the situation. A man was mentioned who anointed himself with oil, after the Greek fashion. ‘This man of Greece,’ said Johnson, alluding to him, ‘or grease, as you please to take it.’ This was a solitary accident. He hated all that tinsel of the mind under which jesters conceal their penury. His conversation is a record of human life and character, or a criticism on it. He paid an almost superstitious regard to exact truth in narration, not from care for his own reputation for veracity, but from a passionate interest in the science of human life, which would be immensely advanced if men would but record their feelings and experiences with minute care. He censured John Wesley for not making careful inquiry into the evidence for a story about a ghost. ‘What, sir!’ said Miss Seward, ‘about a ghost?’ ‘Yes, Madam,’ said Johnson, ‘this is a question which, after five thousand years, is yet undecided; a question, whether in theology or philosophy, one of the most important that can come before the human understanding.’

The best stories that are told of Johnson are not good stories at all, in the ordinary sense; they are specimens of human character. Boswell does not seem to have selected the sayings he records, though his memory would no doubt exercise a certain unconscious choice. He makes use of all he can remember, yet how many must be lost! They can never be recovered, or even