One of Rochefoucauld’s maxims is:  “Young women who do not wish to appear coquette, and men of advanced years who do not wish to appear ridiculous, should never speak of love as of a thing in which they might take part.”  Mrs. Thrale relates an amusing instance of Johnson’s adroitness in escaping from the dilemma:  “As we had been saying one day that no subject failed of receiving dignity from the manner in which Mr. Johnson treated it, a lady at my house said, she would make him talk about love; and took her measures accordingly, deriding the novels of the day because they treated about love.  ’It is not,’ replied our philosopher, ’because they treat, as you call it, about love, but because they treat of nothing, that they are despicable:  we must not ridicule a passion which he who never felt, never was happy, and he who laughs at, never deserves to feel—­a passion which has caused the change of empires, and the loss of worlds—­a passion which has inspired heroism and subdued avarice.’  He thought he had already said too much.  ‘A passion, in short,’ added he, with an altered tone, ’that consumes me away for my pretty Fanny here, and she ‘is very cruel,’ speaking of another lady (Miss Burney) in the room.”

As the high-flown language which he occasionally employed in addressing or discussing women, has originated a theory that the basis or essence of his character was romance, it may be as well to contrast what he said in soberer moods on love.  He remarked to Dr. Maxwell, that “its violence and ill-effects were much exaggerated; for who knows any real sufferings on that head, more than from the exorbitancy of any other passion?” On Boswell asking him whether he did not suppose that there are fifty women in the world with any of whom a man may be as happy as with any one woman in particular, he replied, “Ay, Sir, fifty thousand.  I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the lord-chancellor upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances without the parties having any choice in the matter.”  On another occasion he observed that sensible men rarely married for love.

These peculiarities throw light on more questions than one relating to Johnson’s prolonged intimacy and alleged quarrel with Mrs. Thrale.  His gallantry, and the flattering air of deferential tenderness which he threw into his commerce with his female favourites, may have had little less to do with his domestication at Streatham than his celebrity, his learning, or his wit.  The most submissive wife will manage to dislodge an inmate who is displeasing to her, “Aye, a marriage, man,” said Bucklaw to his led captain, “but wherefore droops thy mighty spirit?  The board will have a corner, and the corner will have a trencher, and the trencher will have a glass beside it; and the board end shall be filled, and the trencher and the glass shall be replenished for thee, if all the petticoats in Lothian had sworn the contrary.”  “So says many an honest fellow,” said Craigenfelt, “and some of my special friends; but curse me if I know the reason, the women could never bear me, and always contrived to trundle me out before the honey-moon was over."[1]