That learned and ingenious Prelate[595] it is well known published at one period of his life Moral and Political Dialogues, with a woefully whiggish cast.  Afterwards, his Lordship having thought better, came to see his errour, and republished the work with a more constitutional spirit.  Johnson, however, was unwilling to allow him full credit for his political conversion.  I remember when his Lordship declined the honour of being Archbishop of Canterbury, Johnson said, ’I am glad he did not go to Lambeth; for, after all, I fear he is a Whig in his heart.’

Johnson’s attention to precision and clearness in expression was very remarkable.  He disapproved of parentheses; and I believe in all his voluminous writings, not half a dozen of them will be found.  He never used the phrases the former and the latter, having observed, that they often occasioned obscurity; he therefore contrived to construct his sentences so as not to have occasion for them, and would even rather repeat the same words, in order to avoid them[596].  Nothing is more common than to mistake surnames when we hear them carelessly uttered for the first time.  To prevent this, he used not only to pronounce them slowly and distinctly, but to take the trouble of spelling them; a practice which I have often followed; and which I wish were general.

Such was the heat and irritability of his blood, that not only did he pare his nails to the quick; but scraped the joints of his fingers with a pen-knife, till they seemed quite red and raw.

The heterogeneous composition of human nature was remarkably exemplified in Johnson.  His liberality in giving his money to persons in distress was extraordinary.  Yet there lurked about him a propensity to paultry saving.  One day I owned to him that ’I was occasionally troubled with a fit of narrowness.’  ’Why, Sir, (said he,) so am I. But I do not tell it.’  He has now and then borrowed a shilling of me; and when I asked for it again, seemed to be rather out of humour.  A droll little circumstance once occurred:  as if he meant to reprimand my minute exactness as a creditor, he thus addressed me;—­’Boswell, lend me sixpence—­not to be repaid[597].’

This great man’s attention to small things was very remarkable.  As an instance of it, he one day said to me, ’Sir, when you get silver in change for a guinea, look carefully at it; you may find some curious piece of coin.’

Though a stern true-born Englishman[598], and fully prejudiced against all other nations, he had discernment enough to see, and candour enough to censure, the cold reserve too common among Englishmen towards strangers:  ’Sir, (said he,) two men of any other nation who are shewn into a room together, at a house where they are both visitors, will immediately find some conversation.  But two Englishmen will probably go each to a different window, and remain in obstinate silence.  Sir, we as yet do not enough understand the common rights of humanity[599].’