"Friendship, sir," replied I. "Why, now, is it not strange that a wise man, like our dear little Evans, should take it in his head to preach on such a subject, in a place where no one can be thinking of it?" "Why, what are they thinking upon, sir?" said I. "Why, the men are thinking on their money, I suppose, and the women are thinking of their mops."Dr. Johnson's knowledge and esteem of what we call low or coarse life was indeed prodigious; and he did not like that the upper ranks should be dignified with the name of THE WORLD. Sir Joshua Reynolds said one day that nobody WORE laced coats now; and that once everybody wore them. "See, now," says Johnson, "how absurd that is; as if the bulk of mankind consisted of fine gentlemen that came to him to sit for their pictures. If every man who wears a laced coat (that he can pay for) was extirpated, who would miss them?" With all this haughty contempt of gentility, no praise was more welcome to Dr. Johnson than that which said he had the notions or manners of a gentleman: which character I have heard him define with accuracy, and describe with elegance. "Officers," he said, "were falsely supposed to have the carriage of gentlemen; whereas no profession left a stronger brand behind it than that of a soldier; and it was the essence of a gentleman's character to bear the visible mark of no profession whatever." He once named Mr. Berenger as the standard of true elegance;but some one objecting that he too much resembled the gentleman in Congreve's comedies, Mr. Johnson said, "We must fix them upon the famous Thomas Hervey, whose manners were polished even to acuteness and brilliancy, though he lost but little in solid power of reasoning, and in genuine force of mind." Mr. Johnson had, however, an avowed and scarcely limited partiality for all who bore the name or boasted the alliance of an Aston or a Hervey; and when Mr. Thrale once asked him which had been the happiest period of his past life? he replied, "It was that year in which he spent one whole evening with M---y As--n. That, indeed," said he, "was not happiness, it was rapture; but the thoughts of it sweetened the whole year." I must add that the evening alluded to was not passed tete-a-tete, but in a select company, of which the present Lord Killmorey was one.
"Molly," says Dr. Johnson, "was a beauty and a scholar, and a wit and a Whig; and she talked all in praise of liberty: and so I made this epigram upon her. She was the loveliest creature I ever saw!!!
"'Liber ut esse velim, suasisti pulchra Maria, Ut maneam liber--pulchra Maria, vale!'""Will it do this way in English, sir?" said I.
"Persuasions to freedom fall oddly from you;If freedom we seek--fair Maria, adieu!"
"It will do well enough,` replied he, "but it is translated by a lady, and the ladies never loved M---y As--n." I asked him what his wife thought of this attachment? "She was jealous, to be sure," said he, "and teased me sometimes when I would let her; and one day, as a fortune-telling gipsy passed us when we were walking out in company with two or three friends in the country, she made the wench look at my hand, but soon repented her curiosity; 'for,' says the gipsy, 'your heart is divided, sir, between a Betty and a Molly: Betty loves you best, but you take most delight in Molly's company.' When I turned about to laugh, I saw my wife was crying.
Pretty charmer! she had no reason!"
It was, I believe, long after the currents of life had driven him to a great distance from this lady, that he spent much of his time with Mrs.
F-tzh--b--t, of whom he always spoke with esteem and tenderness, and with a veneration very difficult to deserve. "That woman," said he, "loved her husband as we hope and desire to be loved by our guardian angel. F-tzh--b--t was a gay, good-humoured fellow, generous of his money and of his meat, and desirous of nothing but cheerful society among people distinguished in SOME way, in ANY WAY, I think; for Rousseau and St. Austin would have been equally welcome to his table and to his kindness. The lady, however, was of another way of thinking: her first care was to preserve her husband's soul from corruption; her second, to keep his estate entire for their children: and I owed my good reception in the family to the idea she had entertained, that I was fit company for F-tzh--b--t, whom I loved extremely. 'They dare not,' said she, 'swear, and take other conversation-liberties before YOU.'" I asked if her husband returned her regard? "He felt her influence too powerfully," replied Mr. Johnson; "no man will be fond of what forces him daily to feel himself inferior. She stood at the door of her paradise in Derbyshire, like the angel with a flaming sword, to keep the devil at a distance. But she was not immortal, poor dear! she died, and her husband felt at once afflicted and released."I inquired if she was handsome? "She would have been handsome for a queen," replied the panegyrist; "her beauty had more in it of majesty than of attraction, more of the dignity of virtue than the vivacity of wit."1
