breeding; “and you may observe,” he added, “that I am well-bred to a degree of needless scrupulosity.”  He proceeded, according to Mrs. Thrale, but the report a little taxes our faith, to claim the virtues not only of respecting ceremony, but of never contradicting or interrupting his hearers.  It is rather odd that Dr. Barnard had once a sharp altercation with Johnson, and avenged himself by a sarcastic copy of verses in which, after professing to learn perfectness from different friends, he says,—­

  Johnson shall teach me how to place,
  In varied light, each borrow’d grace;
    From him I’ll learn to write;
  Copy his clear familiar style,
  And by the roughness of his file,
    Grow, like himself, polite.

Johnson, on this as on many occasions, repented of the blow as soon as it was struck, and sat down by Barnard, “literally smoothing down his arms and knees,” and beseeching pardon.  Barnard accepted his apologies, but went home and wrote his little copy of verses.

Johnson’s shortcomings in civility were no doubt due, in part, to the narrowness of his faculties of perception.  He did not know, for he could not see, that his uncouth gestures and slovenly dress were offensive; and he was not so well able to observe others as to shake off the manners contracted in Grub Street.  It is hard to study a manual of etiquette late in life, and for a man of Johnson’s imperfect faculties it was probably impossible.  Errors of this kind were always pardonable, and are now simply ludicrous.  But Johnson often shocked his companions by more indefensible conduct.  He was irascible, overbearing, and, when angry, vehement beyond all propriety.  He was a “tremendous companion,” said Garrick’s brother; and men of gentle nature, like Charles Fox, often shrank from his company, and perhaps exaggerated his brutality.

Johnson, who had long regarded conversation as the chief amusement, came in later years to regard it as almost the chief employment of life; and he had studied the art with the zeal of a man pursuing a favourite hobby.  He had always, as he told Sir Joshua Reynolds, made it a principle to talk on all occasions as well as he could.  He had thus obtained a mastery over his weapons which made him one of the most accomplished of conversational gladiators.  He had one advantage which has pretty well disappeared from modern society, and the disappearance of which has been destructive to excellence of talk.  A good talker, even more than a good orator, implies a good audience.  Modern society is too vast and too restless to give a conversationalist a fair chance.  For the formation of real proficiency in the art, friends should meet often, sit long, and be thoroughly at ease.  A modern audience generally breaks up before it is well warmed through, and includes enough strangers to break the magic circle of social electricity.  The clubs in which Johnson delighted were excellently adapted to foster his peculiar talent.