and the manners of a dancing-master. Chesterfield's opinion of Johnson
is indicated by the description in his _Letters_ of a "respectable
Hottentot, who throws his meat anywhere but down his throat. This absurd
person," said Chesterfield, "was not only uncouth in manners and warm in
dispute, but behaved exactly in the same way to superiors, equals, and
inferiors; and therefore, by a necessary consequence, absurdly to two of
the three. _Hinc illae lacrymae!_"

Johnson, in my opinion, was not far wrong in his judgment, though it
would be a gross injustice to regard Chesterfield as nothing but a
fribble. But men representing two such antithetic types were not likely
to admire each other's good qualities. Whatever had been the intercourse
between them, Johnson was naturally annoyed when the dignified noble
published two articles in the _World_--a periodical supported by such
polite personages as himself and Horace Walpole--in which the need of a
dictionary was set forth, and various courtly compliments described
Johnson's fitness for a dictatorship over the language. Nothing could be
more prettily turned; but it meant, and Johnson took it to mean, I
should like to have the dictionary dedicated to me: such a compliment
would add a feather to my cap, and enable me to appear to the world as a
patron of literature as well as an authority upon manners. "After making
pert professions," as Johnson said, "he had, for many years, taken no
notice of me; but when my _Dictionary_ was coming out, he fell a
scribbling in the _World_ about it." Johnson therefore bestowed upon the
noble earl a piece of his mind in a letter which was not published till
it came out in Boswell's biography.

"My Lord,--I have been lately informed by the proprietor of the _World_
that two papers, in which my _Dictionary_ is recommended to the public,
were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour