Mrs. Thrale gave high praise to Mr. Dudley Long, (now North).  JOHNSON.  ’Nay, my dear lady, don’t talk so.  Mr. Long’s character is very short.  It is nothing.  He fills a chair.  He is a man of genteel appearance, and that is all[270].  I know nobody who blasts by praise as you do:  for whenever there is exaggerated praise, every body is set against a character.  They are provoked to attack it.  Now there is Pepys[271]; you praised that man with such disproportion, that I was incited to lessen him, perhaps more than he deserves[272].  His blood is upon your head[273].  By the same principle, your malice defeats itself; for your censure is too violent.  And yet (looking to her with a leering smile) she is the first woman in the world, could she but restrain that wicked tongue of hers;—­she would be the only woman, could she but command that little whirligig[274].’

Upon the subject of exaggerated praise I took the liberty to say, that I thought there might be very high praise given to a known character which deserved it, and therefore it would not be exaggerated.  Thus, one might say of Mr. Edmund Burke, He is a very wonderful man.  JOHNSON.  ’No, Sir, you would not be safe if another man had a mind perversely to contradict.  He might answer, “Where is all the wonder?  Burke is, to be sure, a man of uncommon abilities, with a great quantity of matter in his mind, and a great fluency of language in his mouth.  But we are not to be stunned and astonished by him.”  So you see, Sir, even Burke would suffer, not from any fault of his own, but from your folly.’

Mrs. Thrale mentioned a gentleman who had acquired a fortune of four thousand a year in trade, but was absolutely miserable, because he could not talk in company; so miserable, that he was impelled to lament his situation in the street to ——­[275], whom he hates, and who he knows despises him.  ’I am a most unhappy man (said he).  I am invited to conversations.  I go to conversations; but, alas!  I have no conversation.’  JOHNSON.  ’Man commonly cannot be successful in different ways.  This gentleman has spent, in getting four thousand pounds a year, the time in which he might have learnt to talk; and now he cannot talk.’  Mr. Perkins made a shrewd and droll remark:  ’If he had got his four thousand a year as a mountebank, he might have learnt to talk at the same time that he was getting his fortune.’

Some other gentlemen came in.  The conversation concerning the person whose character Dr. Johnson had treated so slightingly, as he did not know his merit, was resumed.  Mrs. Thrale said, ’You think so of him, Sir, because he is quiet, and does not exert himself with force.  You’ll be saying the same thing of Mr. ——­ there, who sits as quiet—.’  This was not well-bred; and Johnson did not let it pass without correction.  ’Nay, Madam, what right have you to talk thus?  Both Mr. ——­ and I have reason to take it ill. You may talk so of Mr. ——­; but why do you make me do it.  Have I said anything against Mr. ——?  You have set him, that I might shoot him:  but I have not shot him.’