at story very often: but Garrick
told a better, for he said that in their young days, when some strolling
players came to Lichfield, our friend had fixed his place upon the stage,
and got himself a chair accordingly; which leaving for a few minutes, he
found a man in it at his return, who refused to give it back at the first
entreaty. Mr. Johnson, however, who did not think it worth his while to
make a second, took chair and man and all together, and threw them all at
once into the pit. I asked the Doctor if this was a fact. "Garrick has
not _spoiled_ it in the telling," said he, "it is very _near_ true, to be
sure."

Mr. Beauclerc, too, related one day how on some occasion he ordered two
large mastiffs into his parlour, to show a friend who was conversant in
canine beauty and excellence how the dogs quarrelled, and fastening on
each other, alarmed all the company except Johnson, who seizing one in
one hand by the cuff of the neck, the other in the other hand, said
gravely, "Come, gentlemen! where's your difficulty? put one dog out at
the door, and I will show this fierce gentleman the way out of the
window:" which, lifting up the mastiff and the sash, he contrived to do
very expeditiously, and much to the satisfaction of the affrighted
company. We inquired as to the truth of this curious recital. "The dogs
have been somewhat magnified, I believe, sir," was the reply: "they were,
as I remember, two stout young pointers; but the story has gained but
little."

One reason why Mr. Johnson's memory was so particularly exact, might be
derived from his rigid attention to veracity; being always resolved to
relate every fact as it stood, he looked even on the smaller parts of
life with minute attention, and remembered such passages as escape
cursory and common observers. "A story," says he, "is a specimen of
human manners, and derives its sole value from its truth. When Foote has
told me something, I dismiss it from my mind like a passing shadow: when
Reynolds tells me something, I consider myself as possessed of an idea
the more."

Mr. Johnson liked a frolic or a jest well enough, though he had strange
serious rules about it too: and very angry was he if anybody offered to
be merry when he was disposed to be grave. "You have an ill-founded
notion," said he, "that it is clever to turn matters off with a joke (as
the phrase is); whereas nothing produces enmity so certain as one persons
showing a disposition to be merry