Johnson's amazing freedom and
power. Such an assertion cannot be proved, of course; but it would be
difficult to exaggerate the weight of the evidence pointing in that
direction. We have seen the kind of society in which he lived. In
that society, rich in so many kinds of distinction, he was always
accorded, as his right, a kind of informal but quite undisputed
precedence. And it seems to have been the same among strangers as soon
as he had opened his mouth. Whenever and wherever tongues were moving
his primacy was immediate and unquestioned. The actual ears that could
hear him were necessarily few; no man's acquaintances can be more than
an insignificant fraction of the public. But in his case they were
sufficiently numerous, distinguished and enthusiastic to send the fame
of his talk all over the country. Is he the only man whose "Bon Mots,"
as they were called, have been published in his lifetime? "A mighty
impudent thing," as he said of it, but also an irrefragable proof of
his celebrity.

And on the whole his popularity, then and since, has equalled his fame.
Much is said of his rudeness and violence, but the fact remains {251}
that in all his life it does not appear to have cost him a single
friend except the elder Sheridan. Those who knew him best bear the
strongest testimony to the fundamental goodness of his heart. Reynolds
said that he was always the first to seek a reconciliation, Goldsmith
declared that he had nothing of the bear but his skin, and Boswell
records many instances of his placability after a quarrel. The love
his friends felt for him is written large all over Boswell's pages.
And of that feeling the public outside came more and more to share as
much as strangers could. Even in his lifetime he began to receive that
popular canonization which has been developing ever since. Perhaps the
most curious of all the proofs of this is the fact mentioned by Boswell
in a note, "that there were copper pieces struck at Birmingham with his
head impressed on them, which pass current as halfpence there, and in
the neighbouring parts of the country." Has that ever happened to any
other English writer? Well may Boswell cite it in evidence of
Johnson's extraordinary popularity. It is that and it is more. There
is in it not merely a tribute of affection to the living and speaking
man, there is also an anticipation of the most remarkable thing about
his subsequent fame. That has had all along, as w