with the ordinary conventions can possibly lower
his own position. Rank of the spiritual kind was especially venerable to
him. "I should as soon have thought of contradicting a bishop," was a
phrase which marked the highest conceivable degree of deference to a man
whom he respected. Nobody, again, could pay more effective compliments,
when he pleased; and the many female friends who have written of him
agree, that he could be singularly attractive to women. Women are,
perhaps, more inclined than men to forgive external roughness in
consideration of the great charm of deep tenderness in a thoroughly
masculine nature. A characteristic phrase was his remark to Miss
Monckton. She had declared, in opposition to one of Johnson's
prejudices, that Sterne's writings were pathetic: "I am sure," she said,
"they have affected me." "Why," said Johnson, smiling and rolling
himself about, "that is because, dearest, you are a dunce!" When she
mentioned this to him some time afterwards he replied: "Madam, if I had
thought so, I certainly should not have said it." The truth could not be
more neatly put.

Boswell notes, with some surprise, that when Johnson dined with Lord
Monboddo he insisted upon rising when the ladies left the table, and
took occasion to observe that politeness was "fictitious benevolence,"
and equally useful in common intercourse. Boswell's surprise seems to
indicate that Scotchmen in those days were even greater bears than
Johnson. He always insisted, as Miss Reynolds tells us, upon showing
ladies to their carriages through Bolt Court, though his dress was such
that her readers would, she thinks, be astonished that any man in his
senses should have shown himself in it abroad or even at home. Another
odd indication of Johnson's regard for good manners, so far as his
lights would take him, was the extreme disgust with which he often
referred to a certain footman in Paris, who used his fingers in place of
sugar-tongs. So far as Johnson could recognize bad manners he was polite
enough, though unluckily the limitation is one of considerable
importance.

Johnson's claims to politeness were sometimes, it is true, put in a
rather startling form. "Every man of any education," he once said to the
amazement of his hearers, "would rather be called a rascal than accused
of deficiency in the graces." Gibbon, who was present, slily inquired of
a lady whether among all her acquaintance she could not find _one_
exception. According