'--And he would have done it.
Let me now gather some gold dust,--some more fragments of Dr. Johnson's
conversation, without regard to order of time. He said, 'he thought very
highly of Bentley; that no man now went so far in the kinds of learning
that he cultivated[511]; that the many attacks on him were owing to
envy, and to a desire of being known, by being in competition with such
a man; that it was safe to attack him, because he never answered his
opponents, but let them die away[512]. It was attacking a man who would
not beat them, because his beating them would make them live the longer.
And he was right not to answer; for, in his hazardous method of writing,
he could not but be often enough wrong; so it was better to leave things
to their general appearance, than own himself to have erred in
particulars.' He said, 'Mallet was the prettiest drest puppet about
town, and always kept good company[513]. That, from his way of talking
he saw, and always said, that he had not written any part of the _Life
of the Duke of Marlborough_, though perhaps he intended to do it at some
time, in which case he was not culpable in taking the pension[514]. That
he imagined the Duchess furnished the materials for her _Apology_, which
Hooke wrote, and Hooke furnished the words and the order, and all that
in which the art of writing consists.
Pages:
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198