. It
is not a question of the general public, but of the lover of letters. Do
Mr. Browning, Mr. Arnold, Mr. Lowell, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Stephen, Mr.
Morley, know their Johnson? "To doubt would be disloyalty." And what
these big men know in their big way, hundreds of little men know in
their little way. We have no writer with a more genuine literary flavor
about him than the great Cham of literature. No man of letters loved
letters better than he. He knew literature in all its branches--he had
read books, he had written books, he had sold books, he had bought
books, and he had borrowed them. Sluggish and inert in all other
directions, he pranced through libraries. He loved a catalogue; he
delighted in an index. He was, to employ a happy phrase of Dr. Holmes,
at home amongst books as a stable-boy is amongst horses. He cared
intensely about the future of literature and the fate of literary men.
"I respect Millar," he once exclaimed; "he has raised the price of
literature." Now Millar was a Scotchman. Even Horne Tooke was not to
stand in the pillory: "No, no, the dog has too much literature for
that." The only time the author of 'Rasselas' met the author of the
'Wealth of Nations' witnessed a painful scene. The English moralist gave
the Scotch one the lie direct, and the Scotch moralist applied to the
English one a phrase which would have done discredit to the lips of a
costermonger; but this notwithstanding, when Boswell reported that Adam
Smith preferred rhyme to blank verse, Johnson hailed the news as
enthusiastically as did Cedric the Saxon the English origin of the
bravest knights in the retinue of the Norman king. "Did Adam say that?"
he shouted: "I love him for it. I could hug him!" Johnson no doubt
honestly believed he held George III. in reverence, but really he did
not care a pin's fee for all the crowned heads of Europe. All his
reverence was reserved for "poor scholars." When a small boy in a
wherry, on whom had devolved the arduous task of rowing Johnson and his
biographer across the Thames, said he would give all he had to know
about the Argonauts, the Doctor was much pleased, and gave him, or got
Boswell to give him, a double fare. He was ever an advocate of the
spread of knowledge amongst all classes and both sexes. His devotion to
letters has received its fitting reward, the love and respect of all
"lettered hearts."

THE OFFICE OF LITERATURE

Dr. John Brown's pleasant story has become well known, of the