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[1] 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[2]; 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[3]; 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[4].' – '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
- ↑ Johnson's first definition of Canal is a bason of water in a garden.
- ↑ 'Diversion seems to be something lighter than amusement and less forcible than pleasure.' Johnson's Dictionary. 'The publick pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are counterfeit.' Idler, No. 18.
- ↑ Ante, p. 308.
- ↑ 'Talking of a London life, he said, "The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say, there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit, than in all the rest of the kingdom."' Life, ii. 75.
'I observed to Dr. Johnson, that I had a most disagreeable notion of the life of country gentlemen; that I left Mr. Fraser just now, as one leaves a prisoner in a jail. Dr. Johnson said, that I was right in thinking them unhappy; for that they had not enough to keep their minds in motion.' Ib. v. 108. Mrs. Thrale writing to him in 1777, says: – 'You would rather be sick in London than well in the country.' Piozzi Letters, i. 394.
