to preserve it from putrefaction.'

He censured a writer of entertaining Travels[988] for assuming a feigned
character, saying, (in his sense of the word[989],) 'He carries out one
lye; we know not how many he brings back.'[990] At another time, talking
of the same person, he observed, 'Sir, your assent to a man whom you
have never known to falsify, is a debt: but after you have known a man
to falsify, your assent to him then is a favour.'

Though he had no taste for painting, he admired much the manner in which
Sir Joshua Reynolds treated of his art, in his _Discourses to the Royal
Academy_[991]. He observed one day of a passage in them, 'I think I
might as well have said this myself: 'and once when Mr. Langton was
sitting by him, he read one of them very eagerly, and expressed himself
thus:--'Very well, Master Reynolds; very well, indeed. But it will not
be understood.'

When I observed to him that Painting was so far inferiour to Poetry,
that the story or even emblem which it communicates must be previously
known, and mentioned as a natural and laughable instance of this, that a
little Miss on seeing a picture of Justice with the scales, had
exclaimed to me, 'See, there's a woman selling sweetmeats;' he said,
'Painting, Sir, can illustrate, but cannot inform.'

No man was more ready to make an apology when he had censured unjustly,
than Johnson[992]. When a proof-sheet of one of his works was brought to
him, he found fault with the mode in which a part of it was arranged,
refused to read it, and in a passion[993] desired that the
compositor[994] might be sent to him. The compositor was Mr. Manning, a
decent sensible man, who had composed about one half of his
_Dictionary_, when in Mr. Strahan's printing-house; and a great part of
his _Lives of the Poets_, when in that of Mr. Nichols; and who (in his
seventy-seventh year), when in Mr. Baldwin's printing-house, composed a
part of the first edition of this work concerning him. By producing the
manuscript, he at once satisfied Dr. Johnson that he was not to blame.
Upon which Johnson candidly and earnestly said to him, 'Mr. Compositor,
I ask your pardon. Mr. Compositor, I ask your pardon, again and again.'

His generous humanity to the miserable was almost beyond example. The
following instance is well attested:--Coming home late one night, he
found a poor woman lying in the street, so much exhausted that she could
not walk; he took her upon his back, and carried her