This recommendation, we know, was not effectual; but how, or for what
reason, can only be conjectured. It is not to be believed that Mr.
Strahan would have applied, unless Johnson had approved of it. I never
heard him mention the subject; but at a later period of his life, when
Sir Joshua Reynolds told him that Mr. Edmund Burke had said, that if he
had come early into parliament, he certainly would have been the
greatest speaker that ever was there, Johnson exclaimed, 'I should like
to try my hand now.'

It has been much agitated among his friends and others, whether he would
have been a powerful speaker in Parliament, had he been brought in when
advanced in life. I am inclined to think that his extensive knowledge,
his quickness and force of mind, his vivacity and richness of
expression, his wit and humour, and above all his poignancy of sarcasm,
would have had great effect in a popular assembly; and that the
magnitude of his figure, and striking peculiarity of his manner, would
have aided the effect. But I remember it was observed by Mr. Flood, that
Johnson, having been long used to sententious brevity and the short
flights of conversation, might have failed in that continued and
expanded kind of argument, which is requisite in stating complicated
matters in publick speaking; and as a proof of this he mentioned the
supposed speeches in Parliament written by him for the magazine, none of
which, in his opinion, were at all like real debates. The opinion of one
who was himself so eminent an orator, must be allowed to have great
weight. It was confirmed by Sir William Scott, who mentioned that
Johnson had told him that he had several times tried to speak in the
Society of Arts and Sciences, but 'had found he could not get on.' From
Mr. William Gerrard Hamilton I have heard that Johnson, when observing
to him that it was prudent for a man who had not been accustomed to
speak in publick, to begin his speech in as simple a manner as possible,