ography, which mentions the names of so many London streets, squares
and churches, as Boswell's _Life of Johnson_. Many sights that Johnson
saw we can still see exactly as he saw them; many, of course, have
disappeared; and many are so utterly changed as to be unrecognizable.
The young poet may still stand where he and Goldsmith stood in Poets'
Corner and say in his heart with Johnson--

"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis."

But when he goes on as they did to Temple Bar, he will find that
ancient monument retired into the country and certainly {156} nothing
whatever to remind him of the Jacobite heads still mouldering on it,
which gave occasion to Goldsmith's witty turning of his Tory friend's
quotation--

"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur ISTIS."

But on that holy ground the Johnsonian will hardly miss even Temple
Bar. For most of Johnson's haunts and homes, the Mitre and the Cock,
the Churches of St. Clement and of the Temple, his houses in Johnson's
Court and Gough Square, are or were all hard by: and the memory will be
far too busy to allow room for the disappointments and lamentations of
the eye.

But of course the great characteristic of Johnson is neither love of
London nor hatred of Presbyterians, nor any of the other things we have
been talking about; it is the love and power of talk. We cannot
estimate talk nearly as accurately as we estimate writing: so much that
belongs to the word spoken is totally lost when it becomes a word
recorded: the light in the eye, the brow raised in scorn or anger, the
moving lips whose amusement or contempt is a picture before it is a
sound, the infinitely varying weight and tone of the human voice: all
that is gone or seen only {157} very darkly through the glass of
description. But since the talk itself as written down and the manner
of it as described are all we have to judge by: and since as long as we
are alive and awake we cannot avoid judging the things and people that
interest us, we inevitably form opinions about talkers as well as about
writers: and the best opinion of those who know English is undoubtedly
that Johnson is the greatest of all recorded talkers. The best of all
is very possibly some obscure genius who _caret vate sacro_: but
Johnson with the invaluable help of Boswell has beaten him and all the
others. What is the essence of his superiority? Not wisdom or
profundity certainly. There, of course, he would be immeasurably
su