334 Anecdotes.
��superiority of Cervantes to all other modern writers? Shake speare himself has, till lately, been worshipped only at home, though his plays are now the favourite amusements of Vienna ; and when I was at Padua some months ago, Romeo and Juliet was acted there under the name of Tragedia Veronese ; while en gravers and translators live by the Hero of La Mancha in every nation, and the sides of miserable inns all over England and France, and I have heard Germany too, are adorned with the exploits of Don Quixote. May his celebrity procure my pardon for a digression in praise of a writer who, through four volumes of the most exquisite pleasantry and genuine humour, has never been seduced to overstep the limits of propriety, has never called in the wretched auxiliaries of obscenity or profaneness ; who trusts to nature and sentiment alone, and never misses of that applause which Voltaire and Sterne labour to produce T , while honest merriment bestows her unfading crown upon Cervantes.
Dr. Johnson was a great reader of French literature, and delighted exceedingly in Boileau's works 3 . Moliere I think he had hardly sufficient taste of; and he used to condemn me for preferring La Bruyere to the Due de Rochefoucault, * who (he said) was the only gentleman writer who wrote like a professed author. 1 The asperity of his harsh sentences, each of them a sentence of condemnation, used to disgust me however ; though it must be owned, that, among the necessaries of Tiuman life, a rasp is reckoned one as well as a razor.
Mr. Johnson did not like any one who said they were happy, or who said any one else was so. ' It is all cant (he would cry), the dog knows he is miserable all the time V A friend whom
1 Goldsmith called Sterne 'a 2 ' S'il m'est permis de parler pour
bawdy blockhead.' Citizen of the moi-meme, Boileau est un des
World, Letter 74 ; Life, ii. 173, n. 2. hommes qui m'ont le plus occup
When he said that he was ' a very depuis que je fais de la critique, et
dull fellow ' Johnson replied, ' Why avec qui j'ai le plus vdcu en idee.'
no Sir.' Ib. ii. 222. Later on how- Sainte-Beuve, Causeries de Lundi,
ever, Johnson said : ' Nothing odd vi. 495.
will do long. Tristram Shandy did 3 ' The world in its best state is
not last.' Ib. ii. 449. nothing more than a larger assembly
he
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