Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/173

 Rh come to them in the natural sequence of history, we feel we are on the borderland between the old life and the new; between the tepid affection or playful panegyrics which characterized the eighteenth century, and the more sincere emotions which succeeded. Dr. Johnson died sixteen years before Cowper, yet it is plain that his sentiment for Hodge was something very different from the temperate regard of the poet, based upon unworthy utilitarianism. Cowper, it is true, killed the viper, lest it should rob the Olney household of the

but Johnson would have slain a wilderness of vipers without thought of a mouse in the cupboard. "Indulgence" is the term applied by Boswell—who cordially hated cats—to his patron's amiable weakness; and it is plain that it cost him some effort to sympathize with so strange a partiality.

"I shall never forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat, for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants, having that trouble, should take a dislike to the poor creature. I am, unluckily, one of those who have such an antipathy to a cat that I am uneasy when I am in the room with one; and I own I frequently suffered a good deal from the presence of this same Hodge.