Johnson. Garrick's school reminiscences would probably have made a much
more charming woman grotesque. Garrick is welcome to his remembrances;
we may even reserve for ourselves the liberty of envying those who heard
him. But honest laughter should not fall into that tone of common
antithesis which seems to say, "See what are the absurdities of the
great! Such is life! On this one point we, even we, are wiser than Dr.
Johnson--we know how grotesque was his wife. We know something of the
privacies of her toilet-table. We are able to compare her figure with
the figures we, unlike him in his youth, have had the opportunity of
admiring--the figures of the well-bred and well-dressed." It is a sorry
success to be able to say so much.

But in fact such a triumph belongs to no man. When Samuel Johnson, at
twenty-six, married his wife, he gave the dull an advantage over himself
which none but the dullest will take. He chose, for love, a woman who
had the wit to admire him at first meeting, and in spite of first sight.
"That," she said to her daughter, "is the most sensible man I ever met."
He was penniless. She had what was no mean portion for those times and
those conditions; and, granted that she was affected, and provincial, and
short, and all the rest with which she is charged, she was probably not
without suitors; nor do her defects or faults seem to have been those of
an unadmired or neglected woman. Next, let us remember what was the
aspect of Johnson's form and face, even in his twenties, and how little
he could have touched the senses of a widow fond of externals. This one
loved him, accepted him, made him happy, gave to one of the noblest of
all English hearts the one love of its sombre life. And English
literature has had no better phrase for her than Macaulay's--"She
accepted, with a readiness which did her little honour, the addresses of
a suitor who might have been her son."