ws and the nieces who crowd round an old fellow, and help
to tuck him in, till he, contented with the exchange of fame for ease,
e'en resolves to let them set the pillows at his back, and gives no
further proof of his existence than just to suck the jelly that prolongs
it."

For such a life or such a death Dr. Johnson was indeed never intended by
Providence: his mind was like a warm climate, which brings everything to
perfection suddenly and vigorously, not like the alembicated productions
of artificial fire, which always betray the difficulty of bringing them
forth when their size is disproportionate to their flavour. "Je ferois
un Roman tout comme un autre, mais la vie n'est point un Roman," says a
famous French writer; and this was so certainly the opinion of the author
of the "Rambler," that all his conversation precepts tended towards the
dispersion of romantic ideas, and were chiefly intended to promote the
cultivation of

"That which before thee lies in daily life."

MILTON.

And when he talked of authors, his praise went spontaneously to such
passages as are sure in his own phrase to leave something behind them
useful on common occasions, or observant of common manners. For example,
it was not the two _last_, but the two _first_ volumes of "Clarissa" that
he prized; "for give me a sick-bed and a dying lady," said he, "and I'll
be pathetic myself. But Richardson had picked the kernel of life," he
said, "while Fielding was contented with the husk." It was not King Lear
cursing his daughters, or deprecating the storm, that I remember his
commendations of; but Iago's ingenious malice and subtle revenge; or
Prince Hal's gay compliance with the vices of Falstaff, whom he all along
despised. Those plays had indeed no rivals in Johnson's favour: "No man
but Shakespeare," he said, "could have drawn Sir John."

His manner of criticising and commending Addison's prose was the same in
conversation as we read it in the printed strictures, and many of the
expressions used have been heard to fall from him on common occasions. It
was notwithstanding observable enough (or I fancied so) that he did never
like, though he always thought fit to praise it; and his praises
resembled those of a man who extols the superior elegance of high painted
porcelain, while he himself always chooses to eat off _plate_. I told
him so one day, and he neither denied it nor appeared displeased.

Of the pathetic in poetry he never l