g the chickens," as he said I did, "till I starved my own
understanding. Get, however," said he, "a book about gardening, and
study it hard, since you will pass your life with birds and flowers, and
learn to raise the _largest_ turnips, and to breed the _biggest_ fowls."
It was vain to assure him that the goodness of such dishes did not depend
upon their size. He laughed at the people who covered their canals with
foreign fowls, "when," says he, "our own geese and ganders are twice as
large. If we fetched better animals from distant nations, there might be
some sense in the preference; but to get cows from Alderney, or water-
fowl from China, only to see nature degenerating round one, is a poor
ambition indeed."

Nor was Mr. Johnson more merciful with regard to the amusements people
are contented to call such. "You hunt in the morning," says he, "and
crowd to the public rooms at night, and call it _diversion_, when your
heart knows it is perishing with poverty of pleasures, and your wits get
blunted for want of some other mind to sharpen them upon. There is in
this world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality), but exchange
of ideas in conversation; and whoever has once experienced the full flow
of London talk, when he retires to country friendships, and rural sports,
must either be contented to turn baby again and play with the rattle, or
he will pine away like a great fish in a little pond, and die for want of
his usual food." "Books without the knowledge of life are useless," I
have heard him say; "for what should books teach but the art of _living_?
To study manners, however, only in coffee-houses, is more than equally
imperfect; the minds of men who acquire no solid learning, and only exist
on the daily forage that they pick up by running about, and snatching
what drops from their neighbours as ignorant as themselves, will never
ferment into any knowledge valuable or durable; but like the light wines
we drink in hot countries, please for the moment, though incapable of
keeping. In the study of mankind much will be found to swim as froth,
and much must sink as feculence, before the wine can have its effect, and
become that noblest liquor which rejoices the heart, and gives vigour to
the imagination."

I am well aware that I do not and cannot give each expression of Dr.
Johnson with all its force or all its neatness; but I have done my best
to record such of his maxims, and repeat such of his sentiment