ter of record. Carlyle no doubt was a great
talker--no man talked against talk or broke silence to praise it more
eloquently than he, but unfortunately none of it is in evidence. All
that is given us is a sort of Commination Service writ large. We soon
weary of it. Man does not live by curses alone.

An unhappier prediction of a boy's future was surely never made than that
of Johnson's by his cousin, Mr. Cornelius Ford, who said to the infant
Samuel, 'You will make your way the more easily in the world as you are
content to dispute no man's claim to conversation excellence, and they
will, therefore, more willingly allow your pretensions as a writer.'
Unfortunate Mr. Ford! The man never breathed whose claim to conversation
excellence Dr. Johnson did not dispute on every possible occasion,
whilst, just because he was admittedly so good a talker, his pretensions
as a writer have been occasionally slighted.

Johnson's personal character has generally been allowed to stand high.
It, however, has not been submitted to recent tests. To be the first to
'smell a fault' is the pride of the modern biographer. Boswell's artless
pages afford useful hints not lightly to be disregarded. During some
portion of Johnson's married life he had lodgings, first at Greenwich,
afterwards at Hampstead. But he did not always go home o' nights;
sometimes preferring to roam the streets with that vulgar ruffian Savage,
who was certainly no fit company for him. He once actually quarrelled
with 'Tetty,' who, despite her ridiculous name, was a very sensible woman
with a very sharp tongue, and for a season, like stars, they dwelt apart.
Of the real merits of this dispute we must resign ourselves to ignorance.
The materials for its discussion do not exist; even Croker could not find
them. Neither was our great moralist as sound as one would have liked to
see him in the matter of the payment of small debts. When he came to
die, he remembered several of these outstanding accounts; but what
assurance have we that he remembered them all? One sum of 10 pounds he
sent across to the honest fellow from whom he had borrowed it, with an
apology for his delay; which, since it had extended over a period of
twenty years, was not superfluous. I wonder whether he ever repaid Mr.
Dilly the guinea he once borrowed of him to give to a very small boy who
had just been apprenticed to a printer. If he did not, it was a great
shame. That he was indebted to Si