a lady lend the key of her library to a
poor scribbling dependant, as if she took the woman for an ostrich that
could digest iron." He said, indeed, "that women were very difficult to
be taught the proper manner of conferring pecuniary favours; that they
always gave too much money or too little; for that they had an idea of
delicacy accompanying their gifts, so that they generally rendered them
either useless or ridiculous."

He did, indeed, say very contemptuous things of our sex, but was
exceedingly angry when I told Miss Reynolds that he said "It was well
managed of some one to leave his affairs in the hands of his wife,
because, in matters of business," said he, "no woman stops at integrity."
This was, I think, the only sentence I ever observed him solicitous to
explain away after he had uttered it. He was not at all displeased at
the recollection of a sarcasm thrown on a whole profession at once; when
a gentleman leaving the company, somebody who sat next Dr. Johnson asked
him, who he was? "I cannot exactly tell you, sir," replied he, "and I
would be loth to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it,
but I am afraid he is an _attorney_." He did not, however, encourage
general satire, and for the most part professed himself to feel directly
contrary to Dr. Swift; "who," says he, "hates the world, though he loves
John and Robert, and certain individuals."

Johnson said always, "that the world was well constructed, but that the
particular people disgraced the elegance and beauty of the general
fabric." In the same manner I was relating once to him how Dr. Collier
observed that the love one bore to children was from the anticipation
one's mind made while one contemplated them. "We hope," says he, "that
they will sometime make wise men or amiable women; and we suffer 'em to
take up our affection beforehand. One cannot love _lumps of flesh_, and
little infants are nothing more." "On the contrary," says Johnson, "one
can scarcely help wishing, while one fondles a baby, that it may never
live to become a man; for it is so probable that when he becomes a man,
he should be sure to end in a scoundrel." Girls were less displeasing to
him; "for as their temptations were fewer," he said, "their virtue in
this life, and happiness in the next, were less improbable; and he
loved," he said, "to see a knot of little misses dearly."

Needlework had a strenuous approver in Dr. Johnson, who said "that one of
the g