thing."

Her proneness to exaggerated praise especially excited his
indignation, and he endeavours to make her responsible for his
rudeness on the strength of it.

"Mrs. Thrale gave high praise to Mr. Dudley Long (now North).
_Johnson_. 'Nay, my dear lady, don't talk so. Mr. Long's character is
very _short_. It is nothing. He fills a chair. He is a man of genteel
appearance, and that is all. I know nobody who blasts by praise as
you do: for whenever there is exaggerated praise, every body is set
against a character. They are provoked to attack it. Now there is
Pepys; you praised that man with such disproportion, that I was
incited to lessen him, perhaps more than he deserves. _His blood is
upon your head_. By the same principle, your malice defeats itself;
for your censure is too violent. And yet (looking to her with a
leering smile) she is the first woman in the world, could she but
restrain that wicked tongue of hers;--she would be the only woman,
could she but command that little whirligig.'"

Opposite the words I have printed in italics she has written: "An
expression he would not have used; no, not for worlds."

In Boswell's note of a visit to Streatham in 1778, we find:--

"Next morning, while we were at breakfast, Johnson gave a very
earnest recommendation of what he himself practised with the utmost
conscientiousness: I mean a strict attention to truth even in the
most minute particulars. 'Accustom your children,' said he,
'constantly to this: if a thing happened at one window, and they,
when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it
pass, but instantly check them: you do not know where deviation from
truth will end.' _Boswell_. 'It may come to the door: and when once
an account is at all varied in one circumstance, it may by degrees be
varied so as to be totally different from what really happened.' Our
lively hostess, whose fancy was impatient of the rein, fidgeted at
this, and ventured to say 'Nay, this is too much. If Dr. Johnson
should forbid me to drink tea, I would comply, as I should feel the
restraint only twice a day: but little variations in narrative must
happen a thousand times a day, if one is not perpetually watching.'
_Johnson_. 'Well, Madam, and you _ought_ to be perpetually watching.
It is more from carelessness about truth, than from intentional
lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.'"

Now for the illustrative incident, which occurred during the same
vi