my servant,
who came in talking, and could not immediately comprehend why he should
read what I put into his hands.... How this will be received by you I
know not. I hope you will sympathize with me; but perhaps

"'My mistress, gracious, mild, and good,
Cries--Is he dumb? 'Tis time he should.'

"I suppose you may wish to know how my disease is treated by the
physicians. They put a blister upon my back, and two from my ear to my
throat, one on a side. The blister on the back has done little, and
those on the throat have not risen. I bullied and bounced (it sticks to
our last sand), and compelled the apothecary to make his salve according
to the Edinburgh dispensatory, that it might adhere better. I have now
two on my own prescription. They likewise give me salt of hartshorn,
which I take with no great confidence; but I am satisfied that what can
be done is done for me. I am almost ashamed of this querulous letter,
but now it is written let it go."

This is indeed tonic and bark for the mind.

If, irritated by a comparison that ought never to have been thrust upon
us, we ask why it is that the reader of Boswell finds it as hard to help
loving Johnson as the reader of Froude finds it hard to avoid disliking
Carlyle, the answer must be that whilst the elder man of letters was
full to overflowing with the milk of human kindness, the younger one was
full to overflowing with something not nearly so nice; and that whilst
Johnson was pre-eminently a reasonable man, reasonable in all his
demands and expectations, Carlyle was the most unreasonable mortal that
ever exhausted the patience of nurse, mother, or wife.

Of Dr. Johnson's affectionate nature nobody has written with nobler
appreciation than Carlyle himself. "Perhaps it is this Divine feeling of
affection, throughout manifested, that principally attracts us to
Johnson. A true brother of men is he, and filial lover of the earth."

The day will come when it will be recognized that Carlyle, as a critic,
is to be judged by what he himself corrected for the press, and not by
splenetic entries in diaries, or whimsical extravagances in private
conversation.

Of Johnson's reasonableness nothing need be said, except that it is
patent everywhere. His wife's judgment was a sound one--"He is the most
sensible man I ever met."

As for his brutality, of which at one time we used to hear a great
deal, we cannot say of it what Hookham Frere said of Lander's
immorality