one day, and he did not deny it, that when Murphy joked him the week before for having been so diligent of late between Dodd's sermon and Kelly's prologue, that Dr. Johnson replied, 'Why, Sir, when they come to me with a dead stay-maker and a dying parson, what can a man do[1]?' He said, however, that 'he hated to give away literary performances, or even to sell them too cheaply[2]: the next generation shall not accuse me (added he) of beating down the price of literature: one hates, besides, ever to give that which one has been accustomed to sell; would not you, Sir (turning to Mr. Thrale), rather give away money than porter?'
Mr. Johnson had never, by his own account, been a close student[3], and used to advise young people never to be without a book in their pocket, to be read at bye-times when they had nothing else to do. 'It has been by that means (said he to a boy at our house one day) that all my knowledge has been gained, except what I have picked up by running about the world with my wits ready to observe, and my tongue ready to talk[4]. A man is seldom in a humour to unlock his book-case,
- ↑ In 1777 he wrote a Prologue to A Word to the Wise by Hugh Kelly – a play which had been damned in 1770, but was revived for one night for the benefit of the author's widow and children. Life, iii. 113. Kelly served his apprenticeship to a Dublin stay-maker. Chalmers's Biog. Dict. xix. 292.
The same summer Johnson wrote The Convict's Address to his unhappy Brethren for Dr. Dodd, who was under sentence of death. Life, iii. 141.
- ↑ 'No man but a blockhead,' he said, 'ever wrote except for money.' Ib. iii. 19. He often sold his own works far too cheaply. For the Lives of the Poets he asked only two hundred guineas. 'Had he asked one thousand, or even fifteen hundred guineas,' writes Malone, 'the booksellers would doubtless have readily given it.' Ib. iii. 111, n. 1. See also ib. i. 341, n. 3.
- ↑ 'Sir, in my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now.' Ib. i. 445. 'I never knew a man who studied hard. I conclude indeed from the effects that some men have studied hard, as Bentley and Clarke.' Ib. i. 71. He told the King that 'he had read a great deal in the early part of his life, but having fallen into ill-health he had not been able to read much compared with others.' Ib. ii. 36. Nevertheless Adam Smith told Boswell that 'Johnson knew more books than any man alive.' Ib. i. 71.
- ↑ 'He said to me,' writes Boswell, 'that before he wrote the Rambler he had been "running about the
