ations, because, should you omit them, Nature can supply the omission; but Nature cannot open a vein to bleed you."-" I do not like to take an emetic (said Taylor) for fear of breaking some small vessels."-" Poh! (said Johnson) if you have so many things that will break, you had better break your neck at once, and there's an end on't. You will break no small vessels." (blowing with high derision).

Having one day asked Mr. Langton if his father and mother had sat for their pictures, which he thought it right for each generation of a family to do, and being told that they had opposed it, he said, "Sir, among the anfractuosities of the human mind, I know not if it may not be one, that there is a superstitious reluctance to sit for a picture."

Talking of a friend of his associating with persons of very discordant principles and characters, Mr. B. said, that he was a very universal man, quite a man of the world.-JOHNSON. "Yes, Sir; but one may be so much a man of the world as to be nothing in the world. I remember a pasin Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield,' which sage he was afterwards fool enough to expunge: 'I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.' BOSWELL. "That was a fine passage."-7. "Yes, Sir; there was another fine passage too, which he struck out: When I was a young man, being

anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions: but I soon gave this over; for I found that generally what was new was false."" Mr. B. said he did not like to sit with people of whom he had not a good opinion. -7. "But you must not indulge your delicacy too much; or you will be a tête à tête man all your life."

When Mr. Vesey was proposed as a member of the LITERARY CLUB, Mr. Burke began by saying that he was a man of gentle manners. "Sir (said Johnson), you need say no more. When you have said a man of gentle manners, you have said enough."

The late Mr. Fitzherbert told Mr. Langton that Johnson said to him, "Sir, a man has no more right to say an uncivil thing, than to act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down."

On some occasion he observed, "Though many men are nominally entrusted with the administration of hospitals and other public institutions, almost all the good is done by one man, by whom the rest are driven on; owing to confidence in him, and indolence in them.”

Speaking of a gentleman whose house was much frequented by low company, "" Rags (said he) will always make their appearance where they have a right to do it.”

Of the same gentleman's mode of living, he said, "The servants, instead of doing what they are bid, stand round the table in idle clusters, gaping upon the guests; and seem as unfit to attend a company, as to steer a man of war.' . He remarked, "that a man should pass a part of his time with the laughers, by which means any thing ridiculous or particular about him might be presented to his view, and corrected." Mr. Boswell observed, that he must have been a bold laugher who would have ventured to tell Dr. Johnson of any of his particularities.

"There is (said Johnson) a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle aged man, when leaving a company, does not recollect where he laid his hat it is nothing; but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, people will shrug up their shoulders, and say, His memory is going.""

Of a certain noble Lord, he said, "Respect him you could not; for he had no mind of his own; love him you could not; for that which you could do with him, every one else could."

Being asked by a young nobleman, what was. become of the gallantry and military spirit of the old English nobility, he replied, "Why, my Lord, I'll tell you what is become of it; it is gone into the city to look for a fortune."

Speaking of a dull tiresome fellow, whom he chanced to meet, he said, "That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one."

To a correspondent who had been tardy in his communications, he wrote thus: "Are you playing the same trick again, and trying who can keep silence longest? Remember that all tricks are either knavish or childish; and that it is as foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend, as upon the chastity of a wife. What can be the cause of this second fit of silence, I cannot conjecture; but after one trick, I will not be cheated by another, nor will harass my thoughts with conjectures about the motives of a man who probably acts only by caprice."

He one day observed to Sir William Scott, "The age is running mad after innovation; all the business of the world is to be done in a new way; men are to be hanged in a new way; Tyburn itself is not safe from the fury of innovation." It having been argued that this was an improvement, "No, Sir (said he eagerly), it is not an improvement: they object that the old method drew together a number of spectators;Sir, executions are intended to draw spectators. If they do not draw spectators, they do not answer the purpose. The old method was most

satisfactory to all parties; the public was gratified by a procession; the criminal was supported by it. Why is all this to be swept away *?”

He said, "Mankind have a strong attachment to the habitations to which they have been accustomed. You see the inhabitants of Norway do not with one consent quit it, and go to some part of America, where there is a mild climate, and where they may have the same produce from land, with the tenth part of the labour. No, Sir; their affection for their old dwellings, and the terror of a general change, keep them at home. Thus we see many of the finest spots in the world thinly inhabited, and many rugged spots well inhabited."

"Madness (he said on some other occasion) frequently discovers itself merely by unnecessary deviation from the usual modes of the world. My poor friend Smart shewed the disturbance of his mind, by falling upon his knees, and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place. Now although, rationally speaking, it is greater madness not to pray at all, than to pray as

* "I perfectly agree (says Mr. Boswell) with Dr. Johnson upon this head, and am persuaded that executions now, the solemn procession being discontinued, have not nearly the effect which they formerly had. Magistrates, both in London and elsewhere, have, I am afraid, in this had too much regard to their own ease."