wealthy. A
washer-woman, left a widow with nine small children, would not have
sobbed herself to death.

A person who troubled himself so little about small or sentimental
grievances was not likely to be very attentive to the feelings of others
in the ordinary intercourse of society. He could not understand how a
sarcasm or a reprimand could make any man really unhappy. "My dear
doctor," said he to Goldsmith, "what harm does it do to a man to call
him Holofernes?" "Pooh, ma'am," he exclaimed to Mrs. Carter, "who is the
worse for being talked of uncharitably?" Politeness has been well
defined as benevolence in small things. Johnson was impolite, not
because he wanted benevolence, but because small things appeared smaller
to him than to people who had never known what it was to live for
fourpence halfpenny a day.

The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect was the union of great
powers with low prejudices. If we judged of him by the best parts of his
mind, we should place him almost as high as he was placed by the
idolatry of Boswell; if by the worst parts of his mind, we should place
him even below Boswell himself. Where he was not under the influence of
some strange scruple, or some domineering passion, which prevented him
from boldly and fairly investigating a subject, he was a wary and acute
reasoner, a little too much inclined to scepticism, and a little too
fond of paradox. No man was less likely to be imposed upon by fallacies
in argument, or by exaggerated statements of facts. But, if while he was
beating down sophisms and exposing false testimony, some childish
prejudices, such as would excite laughter in a well managed nursery,
came across him, he was smitten as if by enchantment. His mind dwindled
away under the spell from gigantic elevation to dwarfish littleness.
Those who had lately been admiring its amplitude and its force were now
as much astonished at its strange narrowness and feebleness as the
fisherman in the Arabian tale, when he saw the Genie, whose stature had
overshadowed the whole sea-coast, and whose might seemed equal to a
contest with armies, contract himself to the dimensions of his small
prison, and lie there the helpless slave of the charm of Solomon.

* * * * *

The characteristic faults of his style are so familiar to all our
readers, and have been so often burlesqued, that it is almost
superfluous to point them out. It is well-known that he made les