d he did not serve in person; but the
idea, with all its circumstances, is certainly laughable. He upon that
occasion provided himself with a musket, and with a sword and belt,
which I have seen hanging in his closet.

An authour of most anxious and restless vanity being mentioned, 'Sir,
(said he,) there is not a young sapling upon Parnassus more severely
blown about by every wind of criticism than that poor fellow.'

The difference, he observed, between a well-bred and an ill-bred man is
this: 'One immediately attracts your liking, the other your aversion.
You love the one till you find reason to hate him; you hate the other
till you find reason to love him.'

A foppish physician once reminded Johnson of his having been in
company with him on a former occasion; 'I do not remember it, Sir.' The
physician still insisted; adding that he that day wore so fine a coat
that it must have attracted his notice. 'Sir, (said Johnson,) had you
been dipt in Pactolus I should not have noticed you.'

He seemed to take a pleasure in speaking in his own style; for when he
had carelessly missed it, he would repeat the thought translated into
it. Talking of the Comedy of The Rehearsal, he said, 'It has not wit
enough to keep it sweet.' This was easy; he therefore caught himself,
and pronounced a more round sentence; 'It has not vitality enough to
preserve it from putrefaction.'

Though he had no taste for painting, he admired much the manner in which
Sir Joshua Reynolds treated of his art, in his Discourses to the Royal
Academy. He observed one day of a passage in them, 'I think I might as
well have said this myself:' and once when Mr. Langton was sitting
by him, he read one of them very eagerly, and expressed himself
thus:--'Very well, Master Reynolds; very well, indeed. But it will not
be understood.'

When I observed to him that Painting was so far inferiour to Poetry,
that the story or even emblem which it communicates must be previously
known, and mentioned as a natural and laughable instance of this, that
a little Miss on seeing a picture of Justice with the scales, had
exclaimed to me, 'See, there's a woman selling sweetmeats;' he said,
'Painting, Sir, can illustrate, but cannot inform.'

No man was more ready to make an apology when he had censured unjustly,
than Johnson. When a proof-sheet of one of his works was brought to him,
he found fault with the mode in which a part of it was arranged, refused
to read it, and in a