ndemned the cold reserve so common among Englishmen. Two
strangers of any other nation, he used to say, will find {133} some
topic of talk at once when they are thrown into an inn parlour
together: two Englishmen will go each to a different window and remain
in obstinate silence. "Sir, we as yet do not enough understand the
common rights of humanity." He boasted that he was never strange in a
strange place, and would talk at his best in a coach with perfect
strangers to their outspoken amazement and delight. At all times he
hated and dreaded being alone, both on moral and medical grounds,
having the fear of madness always before him. He said that he had only
once refused to dine out for the sake of his studies, and then he had
done nothing. He praised a tavern chair as the throne of human
felicity, better indeed, because freer, than anything to be found at a
private house; for only "a very impudent dog indeed can freely command
what is in another man's house." He loved to assert that all great
kings (among whom he curiously included Charles II, "the last King of
England who was a man of parts") had been social men; and he was the
most convinced of Londoners because it was in London that life, which
to him meant the exercise of the social and intellectual faculties, was
to be found at its eagerest and fullest. If, as Mrs. Thrale said, all
he asked for happiness was conversation it must be admitted that his
{134} standard was exacting both in quantity and quality. He never
wanted to go to bed, and if any one would stay with him, would sit
talking and drinking tea till four in the morning. Yet his
instantaneous severity in reproving inaccuracies or refuting fallacies
was so alarming that he sometimes reduced a whole company to the
silence of fear. The last thing he wished, no doubt, but it is one of
the tragedies of life that power will not be denied its exercise, even
to its own misery. But these were the rare dark moments; as a rule, as
we have seen, all who came into a room with him were entranced by the
force, variety and brilliance of his talk.

His natural turn was to be the very opposite of a killjoy; he loved not
merely to be kind to others but to be "merry" with them, Mrs. Thrale
tells us: loved to join in children's games, especially those of a
"knot of little misses," of whom he was fonder than of boys: and always
encouraged cards, dancing and similar amusements. He was by
temperament and conviction