know how to sup decently. If he found Boswell's _Johnson_ tedious, it
was no doubt partly due to his inability to reconcile himself to Johnson's
table manners. It can hardly be denied that he was unnaturally sensitive
to surface impressions. He was a great observer of manners, but not a
great portrayer of character. He knew men in their absurd actions rather
than in their motives--even their absurd motives. He never admits us into
the springs of action in his portraits as Saint-Simon does. He was too
studied a believer in the puppetry of men and women to make them more than
ridiculous. And unquestionably the vain race of authors lent itself
admirably to his love of caricature. His account of the vanity of Gibbon,
whose history he admired this side enthusiasm, shows how he delighted in
playing with an egoistic author as with a trout:

You will be diverted to hear that Mr. Gibbon has quarrelled with
me. He lent me his second volume in the middle of November. I
returned it with a most civil panegyric. He came for more incense.
I gave it, but, alas, with too much sincerity! I added, "Mr.
Gibbon, I am sorry _you_ should have pitched on so disgusting a
subject as the Constantinopolitan History. There is so much of the
Arians and Eumonians, and semi-Pelagians; and there is such a
strange contrast between Roman and Gothic manners, and so little
harmony between a Consul Sabinus and a Ricimer, Duke of the palace,
that though you have written the story as well as it could be
written, I fear few will have patience to read it." He coloured;
all his round features squeezed themselves into sharp angles; he
screwed up his button mouth, and rapping his snuff-box, said, "It
had never been put together before"--_so well_ he meant to add--but
gulped it. He meant _so well_ certainly, for Tillemont, whom he
quotes in every page, has done the very thing. Well, from that hour
to this I have never seen him, though he used to call once or twice
a week; nor has he sent me the third volume, as he promised. I well
knew his vanity, even about his ridiculous face and person, but
thought he had too much sense to avow it so palpably.

"So much," he concludes, "for literature and its fops." The comic spirit
leans to an under-estimate rather than an over-estimate of human nature,
and the airs the authors gave themselves were not only a breach of his
code, but an invitation to