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Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson by Hester Lynch Piozzi 1786  Hester Lynch Thrale's first book. Her personal recollections of Samuel Johnson.

He used to laugh at Shenstone most unmercifully for not caring whether there was anything good to **eat** in the streams he was so fond of, "as if," says Johnson, "one could fill one's belly with hearing soft murmurs, or looking at rough cascades!" He loved the sight of fine forest trees, however, and detested Brighthelmstone Downs, "because it was a country so truly desolate," he said, "that if one had a mind to hang one's self for desperation at being obliged to live there, it would be difficult to find a tree on which to fasten the rope." Walking in a wood when it rained was, I think, the only rural image he pleased his fancy with; "for," says he, "after one has gathered the apples in an orchard, one wishes them well baked, and removed to a London eating-house for enjoyment." With such notions, who can wonder he passed his time uncomfortably enough with us, who he often complained of for living so much in the country, "feeding the chickens," as he said I did, "till I starved my own understanding. Get, however," said he, "a book about gardening, and study it hard, since you will pass your life with birds and flowers, and learn to raise the **largest** turnips, and to breed the biggest fowls."

It was vain to assure him that the goodness of such dishes did not depend upon their size. He laughed at the people who covered their canals with foreign fowls, “when,” says he, “our own geese and ganders are twice as large. If we fetched better animals from distant nations, there might be some sense in the preference; but to get cows from Alderney, or water-fowl from China, only to see nature degenerating round one, is a poor ambition indeed.” Nor was Mr. Johnson more merciful with regard to the amusements people are contented to call such.

You hunt in the morning,” says he, “and crowd to the public rooms at night, and call it diversion, when your heart knows it is perishing with poverty of pleasures, and your wits get blunted for want of some other mind to sharpen them upon. There is in this world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality), but exchange of ideas in conversation; and whoever has once experienced the full flow of London talk, when he retires to country friendships, and rural sports, must either be contented to turn baby again and play with the rattle, or he will pine away like a great fish in a little pond, and die for want of his usual food.” “Books without the knowledge of life are useless.

I have heard him say;

for what should books teach but the art of living? To study manners, however, only in coffee-houses, is more than equally imperfect; the minds of men who acquire no solid learning, and only exist on the daily forage that they pick up by running about, and snatching what drops from their neighbours as ignorant as themselves, will never ferment into any knowledge valuable or durable; but like the light wines we drink in hot countries, please for the moment, though incapable of keeping. In the study of mankind much will be found to swim as froth, and much must sink as feculence, before the wine can have its effect, and become that noblest liquor which rejoices the heart, and gives vigour to the imagination.

I am well aware that I do not and cannot give each expression of Dr. Johnson with all its force or all its neatness; but I have done my best to record such of his maxims, and repeat such of his sentiments, as may give to those who know him not a just idea of his character and manner of thinking. To endeavour at adorning, or adding, or softening, or meliorating such anecdotes, by any tricks my inexperienced pen could play, would be weakness indeed; worse than the Frenchman who presides over the porcelain manufactory at Seve, to whom, when some Greek vases were given him as models, he lamented la tristesse de telles formes; and endeavoured to assist them by clusters of flowers, while flying Cupids served for the handles of urns originally intended to contain the ashes of the dead. The misery is, that I can recollect so few anecdotes, and that I have recorded no more axioms of a man whose every word merited attention, and whose every sentiment did honour to human nature.

Remote from affectation as from error or falsehood, the comfort a reader has in looking over these papers is the certainty that these were really the opinions of Johnson, which are related as such. Fear of what others may think is the great cause of affectation; and he was not likely to disguise his notions out of cowardice. He hated disguise, and nobody penetrated it so readily. I showed him a letter written to a common friend, who was at some loss for the explanation of it. “Whoever wrote it,” says our doctor, “could, if he chose it, make himself understood; but ’tis the letter of an embarrassed man sir;” and so the event proved it to be.

Mysteriousness in trifles offended him on every side. “It commonly ended in guilt,” he said; “for those who begin by concealment of innocent things will soon have something to hide which they dare not bring to light.” He therefore encouraged an openness of conduct, in women particularly, “who,” he observed, “were often led away when children, by their delight and power of surprising.”.

He recommended, on something like the same principle, that when one person meant to serve another, he should not go about it slily, or as we say, underhand, out of a false idea of delicacy, to surprise one’s friend with an unexpected favour, “which, ten to one,” says he, “fails to oblige your acquaintance, who had some reasons against such a mode of obligation, which you might have known but for that superfluous cunning which you think an elegance. Oh! never be seduced by such silly pretences,” continued he; “if a wench wants a good gown, do not give her a fine smelling-bottle, because that is more delicate: as I once knew a lady lend the key of her library to a poor scribbling dependant, as if she took the woman for an ostrich that could digest iron.”.

He said, indeed,

that women were very difficult to be taught the proper manner of conferring pecuniary favours; that they always gave too much money or too little; for that they had an idea of delicacy accompanying their gifts, so that they generally rendered them either useless or ridiculous.

He did, indeed, say very contemptuous things of our sex, but was exceedingly angry when I told Miss Reynolds that he said "It was well managed of some one to leave his affairs in the hands of his wife, because, in matters of business," said he, "no woman stops at integrity." This was, I think, the only sentence I ever observed him solicitous to explain away after he had uttered it. He was not at all displeased at the recollection of a sarcasm thrown on a whole profession at once; when a gentleman leaving the company, somebody who sat next Dr. Johnson asked him, who he was? "I cannot exactly tell you, sir," replied he, "and I would be loth to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney."

He did not, however, encourage general satire, and for the most part professed himself to feel directly contrary to Dr. Swift; “who,” says he, “hates the world, though he loves John and Robert, and certain individuals.” Johnson said always, “that the world was well constructed, but that the particular people disgraced the elegance and beauty of the general fabric.” In the same manner I was relating once to him how Dr. Collier observed that the love one bore to children was from the anticipation one’s mind made while one contemplated them. “We hope,” says he, “that they will sometime make wise men or amiable women; and we suffer ’em to take up our affection beforehand. One cannot love lumps of flesh, and little infants are nothing more.” “On the contrary,” says Johnson, “one can scarcely help wishing, while one fondles a baby, that it may never live to become a man; for it is so probable that when he becomes a man, he should be sure to end in a scoundrel.”

Girls were less displeasing to him; "for as their temptations were fewer," he said, "their virtue in this life, and happiness in the next, were less improbable; and he loved," he said, "to see a knot of little misses dearly." Needlework had a strenuous approver in Dr. Johnson, who said "that one of the great felicities of female life was the general consent of the world that they might amuse themselves with petty occupations, which contributed to the lengthening their lives, and preserving their minds in a state of sanity." "A man cannot hem a pocket-handkerchief," said a lady of quality to him one day, "and so he runs mad, and torments his family and friends." The expression struck him exceedingly, and when one acquaintance grew troublesome, and another unhealthy, he used to quote Lady Frances's observation, "That a man cannot hem a pocket-handkerchief."

The nice people found no mercy from Mr. Johnson; such, I mean, as can only dine at four o’clock, who cannot bear to be waked at an unusual hour, or miss a stated meal without inconvenience. He had no such prejudices himself, and with difficulty forgave them in another. “Delicacy does not surely consist,” says he, “in impossibility to be pleased, and that is false dignity indeed which is content to depend upon others.” The saying of the old philosopher who observes, “That he who wants least is most like the gods, who want nothing,” was a favourite sentence with Dr. Johnson, who on his own part required less attendance, sick or well, than ever I saw any human creature.

Conversation was all he required to make him happy; and when he would have tea made at two o’clock in the morning, it was only that there might be a certainty of detaining his companions round him. On that principle it was that he preferred winter to summer, when the heat of the weather gave people an excuse to stroll about and walk for pleasure in the shade, while he wished to sit still on a chair and chat day after day, till somebody proposed a drive in the coach, and that was the most delicious moment of his life. “But the carriage must stop some time,” he said, “and the people would come home at last,” so his pleasure was of short duration. I asked him why he doated on a coach so? and received for answer, “That in the first place the company were shut in with him there, and could not escape, as out of a room. In the next place, he heard all that was said in a carriage, where it was my turn to be deaf,” and very impatient was he at my occasional difficulty of hearing. On this account he wished to travel all over the world, for the very act of going forward was delightful to him, and he gave himself no concern about accidents, which he said never happened. Nor did the running away of the horses on the edge of a precipice between Vernon and St. Denis, in France, convince him to the contrary, “for nothing came of it,” he said, “except that Mr. Thrale leaped out of the carriage into a chalk-pit, and then came up again looking as white!” When the truth was, all their lives were saved by the greatest Providence ever exerted in favour of three human creatures; and the part Mr. Thrale took from desperation was the likeliest thing in the world to produce broken limbs and death.