even scrupulously and ceremoniously attentive not to offend them; he had
strongly persuaded himself of the difficulty people always find to erase
early impressions either of kindness or resentment, and said "he should
never have so loved his mother when a man had she not given him coffee she
could ill afford, to gratify his appetite when a boy." "If you had had
children, sir," said I, "would you have taught them anything?" "I hope,"
replied he, "that I should have willingly lived on bread and water to
obtain instruction for them; but I would not have set their future
friendship to hazard for the sake of thrusting into their heads knowledge
of things for which they might not perhaps have either taste or necessity.
You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets, and wonder when you
have done that they do not delight in your company. No science can be
communicated by mortal creatures without attention from the scholar; no
attention can be obtained from children without the infliction of pain, and
pain is never remembered without resentment." That something should be
learned was, however, so certainly his opinion that I have heard him say
how education had been often compared to agriculture, yet that it resembled
it chiefly in this: "That if nothing is sown, no crop," says he, "can be
obtained." His contempt of the lady who fancied her son could be eminent
without study, because Shakespeare was found wanting in scholastic
learning, was expressed in terms so gross and so well known, I will not
repeat them here.

To recollect, however, and to repeat the sayings of Dr. Johnson, is almost
all that can be done by the writers of his life, as his life, at least
since my acquaintance with him, consisted in little else than talking, when
he was not absolutely employed in some serious piece of work; and whatever
work he did seemed so much below his powers of performance that he appeared
the idlest of all human beings, ever musing till he was called out to
converse, and conversing till the fatigue of his friends, or the