��Anecdotes.
��The general and constant advice he gave too, when consulted about the choice of a wife, a profession, or whatever influences a man's particular and immediate happiness, was always to reject no positive good from fears of its contrary consequences. ' Do not (said he) forbear to marry a beautiful woman if you can find such, out of a fancy that she will be less constant than an ugly one ; or condemn yourself to the society of coarseness and vulgarity for fear of the expences or other dangers of elegance and personal charms, which have been always acknowledged as a positive good, and for the want of which there should be always given some weighty compensation. I have however (continued Mr. Johnson) seen some prudent fellows who forbore to connect themselves with beauty lest coquetry should be near, and with wit 1 or birth lest insolence should lurk behind them, till they have been forced by their discretion to linger life away in taste less stupidity, and chuse to count the moments by remembrance of pain instead of enjoyment of pleasure.'
When professions were talked of, ' Scorn (said Mr. Johnson) to put your behaviour under the dominion of canters 2 ; never think it clever to call physic a mean study, or law a dry one ; or ask a baby of seven years old which way his genius leads him, for any thing except a peg-top and an apple-pye ; but fix on some business where much money may be got and little virtue risqued : follow that business steadily, and do not live as Roger
��has mazed his imagination in fol lowing the phantoms which other writers raise up before him may here be cured of his delirious extasies by reading human sentiments in human language ; by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions.' Shake speare's Works, ed. 1765, Preface, p. xii.
1 ' Some cunning men choose fools for their wives, thinking to manage them, but they always fail. . . . De pend upon it no woman is the worse
��for sense and knowledge.' Life, v. 226.
2 Canter Johnson here uses in a different sense from that given in his Dictionary ' a term of reproach for hypocrites, who talk formally of re ligion without obeying it.' He talks of * the cant of an author,' and ' the cant of sensibility.' Works, viii. 238, 248. For other instances of cant see Life, iv. 221, n. I.
3 Ib. ii. 437, n. 2. ' Genius,' said Johnson, ' is in fact knowing the use of tools.' Memoirs of Dr. Burney, iii. 5.
Ascham
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