at last, to make sure of victory, he named Ferguson upon "Civil Society,"
and praised the book for being written in a _new_ manner. "I do not,"
says Johnson, "perceive the value of this new manner; it is only like
Buckinger, who had no hands, and so wrote with his feet." Of a modern
Martial, when it came out: "There are in these verses," says Dr. Johnson,
"too much folly for madness, I think, and too much madness for folly."
If, however, Mr. Johnson lamented that the nearer he approached to his
own times, the more enemies he should make, by telling biographical
truths in his "Lives of the Later Poets," what may I not apprehend, who,
if I relate anecdotes of Mr. Johnson, am obliged to repeat expressions of
severity, and sentences of contempt? Let me at least soften them a
little by saying that he did not hate the persons he treated with
roughness, or despise them whom he drove from him by apparent scorn. He
really loved and respected many whom he would not suffer to love him. And
when he related to me a short dialogue that passed between himself and a
writer of the first eminence in the world, when he was in Scotland, I was
shocked to think how he must have disgusted him. "Dr. --- asked me,"
said he, "why I did not join in their public worship when among them?
for," said he, "I went to your churches often when in England." "So,"
replied Johnson, "I have read that the Siamese sent ambassadors to Louis
Quatorze, but I never heard that the King of France thought it worth his
while to send ambassadors from his court to that of _Siam_." He was no
gentler with myself, or those for whom I had the greatest regard. When I
one day lamented the loss of a first cousin killed in America, "Prithee,
my dear," said he, "have done with canting. How would the world be worse
for it, I may ask, if all your relations were at once spitted like larks,
and roasted for Presto's supper?" Presto was the dog that lay under the
table while we talked. When we went into Wales together, and spent some
time at Sir Robert Cotton's, at Lleweny, one day at dinner I meant to
please Mr. Johnson particularly with a dish of very young peas. "Are not
they charming?" said I to him, while he was eating them. "Perhaps," said
he, "they would be so--to a _pig_."

I only instance these replies, to excuse my mentioning those he made to
others.

When a well-known author published his poems in the year 1777: "Such a
one's verses are come out," said I. "Ye