en the gloom
of misery that surrounds me? Is not here sufficient accumulation of
horror without anticipated mourning?" "This is not mourning, sir," said
I, drawing the curtain, that the light might fall upon the silk, and show
it was a purple mixed with green. "Well, well," replied he, changing his
voice, "you little creatures should never wear those sort of clothes,
however; they are unsuitable in every way. What! have not all insects
gay colours?" I relate these instances chiefly to show that the fears of
death itself could not suppress his wit, his sagacity, or his temptation
to sudden resentment.

Mr. Johnson did not like that his friends should bring their manuscripts
for him to read, and he liked still less to read them when they were
brought. Sometimes, however, when he could not refuse, he would take the
play or poem, or whatever it was, and give the people his opinion from
some one page he had peeped into. A gentleman carried him his tragedy,
which, because he loved the author, Johnson took, and it lay about our
rooms some time. "What answer did you give your friend, sir?" said I,
after the book had been called for. "I told him," replied he, "that
there was too much _Tig_ and _Tirry_ in it!" Seeing me laugh most
violently, "Why, what would'st have, child?" said he. "I looked at the
dramatis, and there was _Tig_ranes and _Tiri_dates, or Teribazus, or such
stuff. A man can tell but what he knows, and I never got any farther
than the first page. Alas, madam!" continued he, "how few books are
there of which one ever can possibly arrive at the _last_ page. Was
there ever yet anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its
readers, excepting 'Don Quixote,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' and the 'Pilgrim's
Progress?'" After Homer's Iliad, Mr. Johnson confessed that the work of
Cervantes was the greatest in the world, speaking of it I mean as a book
of entertainment. And when we consider that every other author's
admirers are confined to his countrymen, and perhaps to the literary
classes among _them_, while "Don Quixote" is a sort of common property,
an universal classic, equally tasted by the court and the cottage,
equally applauded in France and England as in Spain, quoted by every
servant, the amusement of every age from infancy to decrepitude; the
first book you see on every shelf, in every shop, where books are sold,
through all the states of Italy; who can refuse his consent to an avowal
of the su