��Anecdotes.
��for the old feudal times *, apparent, whenever any possible manner of shewing them occurred. I have spoken of his piety, his charity, and his truth, the enlargement of his heart, and the delicacy of his sentiments ; and when I search for shadow to my portrait, none can I find but what was formed by pride, differently modified as different occasions shewed it ; yet never was pride so purified as Johnson's, at once from meanness and from vanity. The mind of this man was indeed expanded beyond the common limits of human nature, and stored with such variety of knowledge, that I used to think it resembled a royal pleasure- ground, where every plant, of every name and nation, flourished in the full perfection of their powers, and where, though lofty woods and falling cataracts first caught the eye, and fixed the earliest attention of beholders, yet neither the trim parterre nor the pleasing shrubbery, nor even the antiquated ever-greens, were denied a place in some fit corner of the happy valley.
��is to be done in a new way ; men are to be hanged in a new way ; Tyburn itself is not safe from the fury of innovation.'" Life, iv. 188.
1 Johnson, had he read this, might have reproached Mrs. Piozzi, as he reproached the Earl of Chatham, with 'feudal gabble.' Ib. ii. 134, n. 1 1 said,' writes Boswell, ' I believed mankind were happier in the ancient feudal state of subordination, than they are in the modern state of
��independency. JOHNSON. "To be sure, the Chief was : but we must think of the number of individuals. That they were less happy, seems plain ; for that state from which all escape as soon as they can, and to which none return after they have left it, must be less happy ; and this is the case with the state of depen- dance on a chief or great man." ' Ib. v. 106. See also ib. ii. 177; iii. 3.
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