, that it was--

"Mere imaginary classicality
Wholly devoid of criminal reality."

It was nothing of the sort. Dialectically the great Doctor was a great
brute. The fact is, he had so accustomed himself to wordy warfare that
he lost all sense of moral responsibility, and cared as little for men's
feelings as a Napoleon did for their lives. When the battle was over,
the Doctor frequently did what no soldier ever did that I have heard
tell of,--apologized to his victims and drank wine or lemonade with
them. It must also be remembered that for the most part his victims
sought him out. They came to be tossed and gored. And after all, are
they so much to be pitied? They have our sympathy, and the Doctor has
our applause. I am not prepared to say, with the simpering fellow with
weak legs whom David Copperfield met at Mr. Waterbrook's dinner-table,
that I would sooner be knocked down by a man with blood than picked up
by a man without any; but, argumentatively speaking, I think it would be
better for a man's reputation to be knocked down by Dr. Johnson than
picked up by Mr. Froude.

Johnson's claim to be the best of our talkers cannot, on our present
materials, be contested. For the most part we have only talk about other
talkers. Johnson's is matter 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 disregarde