very tender affectionate man. He was merely offended at the actor’s conceit.[1]
On the former part of this story it probably was that Sir John Hawkins grounded his account that Garrick never was of the Literary Club, and that Johnson said he never ought to be of it. And thus it is that this stupid biographer, and the more flippant and malicious Mrs. Piozzi, have miscoloured and misrepresented almost every anecdote that they have pretended to tell of Dr. Johnson.—(The fact from Sir J. Reynolds.)
Soon after Gainsborough settled in London, Sir J. Reynolds thought himself bound in civility to pay him a visit. Gainsborough took not the least notice of him for several years, but at length called and solicited him to sit for his picture. Sir Joshua sat once; but being soon afterwards affected by a slight paralytick stroke, he was obliged to go to Bath. On his return to town perfectly restored to health, he sent Gainsborough word that he was returned; to which Gainsborough only replied that he was glad to hear he was well; and never after desired him to sit, or called upon him, or had any other intercourse with him till he was dying, when he sent and thanked him for the very handsome manner in which he had always spoken of him; a circumstance which the President has thought worth recording in his fourteenth discourse. Gainsborough was so enamoured of his art that he had many of the pictures he was then work-
- ↑ I mentioned this anecdote to Mr. Boswell, and he has introduced it into his Life of Johnson.—M.
