nobody else will nickname one's children, the parents will e'en do it themselves.'
All this held true in matters to Mr. Johnson of more serious consequence. When Sir Joshua Reynolds had painted his portrait looking into the slit of his pen, and holding it almost close to his eye, as was his general custom, he felt displeased, and told me 'he would not be known by posterity for his defects only, let Sir Joshua do his worst[1].' I said in reply, that Reynolds had no such difficulties about himself, and that he might observe the picture which hung up in the room where we were talking[2], represented Sir Joshua holding his ear in his hand to catch the sound. 'He may paint himself as deaf if he chuses (replied Johnson); but I will not be blinking Sam[3].'
It is chiefly for the sake of evincing the regularity and steadiness of Mr. Johnson's mind that I have given these trifling memoirs, to show that his soul was not different from that of another person, but, as it was, greater; and to give those who did not know him a just idea of his acquiescence in what we call vulgar prejudices, and of his extreme distance from those notions which the world has agreed, I know not very well why, to call romantic. It is indeed observable in his preface to Shakespeare, that while other critics expatiate on the creative powers and vivid imagination of that matchless poet, Dr. Johnson commends him for giving so just a representation of human manners, 'that from his scenes a hermit might estimate the value of society, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions[4]' I have not the book with me here, but am pretty sure that such is his expression.
- ↑ Northcote (Life of Reynolds, ii. 3) and Leslie and Taylor (Life, ii. 143) assign this anecdote to the portrait of Johnson reading. According to Northcote, Johnson said to Sir Joshua:—'It is not friendly to hand down to posterity the imperfections of any man.'
- ↑ The Library at Streatham which was hung with Reynolds's portraits of Mr. Thrale's friends.' Life, iv. 158, n. 1; Letters, i. 232, n. 1; post, p. 342.
- ↑ Post, in Miss Reynolds's Recollections.
- ↑ 'This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirrour of life; that he who
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