July 4. 1833
Dr. Johnson — Boswell — Burke — Newton — Milton
Dr. Johnson’s fame now rests principally upon Boswell. It is impossible not to be amused with such a book. But his bow-wow manner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced;—for no one, I suppose, will set Johnson before Burke,—and Burke was a great and universal talker;—yet now we hear nothing of this except by some chance remarks in Boswell. The fact is, Burke, like all men of genius who love to talk at all, was very discursive and continuous; hence he is not reported; he seldom said the sharp short things that Johnson almost always did, which produce a more decided effect at the moment, and which are so much more easy to carry off.1 Besides, as to Burke’s testimony to Johnson’s powers, you must remember that Burke was a great courtier; and after all, Burke said and wrote more than once that he thought Johnson greater in talking than writing, and greater in Boswell than in real life.2
Newton was a great man, but you must excuse me if I think that it would take many Newtons to make one Milton.
Notes
1 Burke, I am persuaded, was not so continuous a talker as Coleridge. Madame de Stael told a nephew of the latter, at Coppet, that Mr. C. was a master of monologue, mais qu’il ne savait pas le dialogue. There was a spice of vindictiveness in this, the exact history of which is not worth explaining. And if dialogue must be cut down in its meaning to small talk, I, for one, will admit that Coleridge, amongst his numberless qualifications, possessed it not. But I am sure that he could, when it suited him, converse as well as any one else, and with women he frequently did converse in a very winning and popular style, confining them, however, as well as he could, to the detail of facts or of their spontaneous emotions. In general, it was certainly otherwise. “You must not be surprised,” he said to me, “at my talking so long to you—I pass so much of my time in pain and solitude, yet everlastingly thinking, that, when you or any other persons call on me, I can hardly help easing my mind by pouring forth some of the accumulated mass of reflection and feeling, upon an apparently interested recipient.” But the principal reason, no doubt, was the habit of his intellect, which was under a law of discoursing upon all subjects with reference to ideas or ultimate ends. You might interrupt him when you pleased, and he was patient of every sort of conversation except mere personality, which he absolutely hated.—ED.
2
This was said, I believe, to the late Sir James Mackintosh.—ED.