at least as ceremonious a civility as he would have used to so
many people of fashion.

He held no theories of political or social equality; on the contrary,
he looked upon such theories as mischievous nonsense: but the respect
paid to him in his later years by great personages never made him take
a Mayfair or "county-family" view of life. He might stay at Inverary,
visit Alnwick and be invited to Chatsworth, but it took more than the
civilities of three Dukes to blind him to the fact that on a map of
humanity all the magnates in the world occupy but a small space. Even
in the days when he lived at {122} his ease in a rich man's house and,
when in his own, would dine out every day for a fortnight, he never
surrendered himself, as so many who have at last reached comfort do, to
the subtle unrealities of the drawing-room. He would not allow the
well-do-to to call themselves "the world": and when Sir Joshua said one
day that nobody wore laced coats any longer and that once everybody had
worn them, "See now," said Johnson, "how absurd that is; as if the bulk
of mankind consisted of fine gentlemen that came to him to sit for
their pictures. If every man who wears a laced coat (that he can pay
for) was extirpated, who would miss them?" So when Mrs. Thrale once
complained of the smell of cooking he told her she was a fortunate
woman never to have experienced the delight of smelling her dinner
beforehand. "Which pleasure," she answered, "is to be enjoyed in
perfection by such as have the happiness to pass through Porridge
Island of a morning!" Johnson's answer was the grave rebuke of a man
from whose mind the darker side of a prosperous world was never long
absent. "Come, come, let's have no sneering at what is serious to so
many: hundreds of your fellow-creatures, dear lady, turn another way
that they may not be tempted by the luxuries of Porridge Island to wish
for {123} gratifications they are not able to obtain: you are certainly
not better than all of them: give God thanks that you are happier." It
is Mrs. Thrale who herself tells the story: and it is to her credit
that she calls Johnson's answer a just rebuke.

But Johnson's equality was that of the moralist, not that of the
politician. He was the exact opposite of a leveller, believing in the
distinction of ranks as not only a necessity of society, but an
addition to its strength and to the variety and interest of its life.
He himself scrupulously observed th