' One of the company* provoked him greatly by
doing what he could least of all bear, which was quoting something of
his own writing, against what he then maintained. 'What, Sir, (cried the
gentleman,) do you say to
"The busy day, the peaceful night,
Unfelt, uncounted, glided by?"'--
Johnson finding himself thus presented as giving an instance of a man
who had lived without uneasiness, was much offended, for he looked upon
such a quotation as unfair. His anger burst out in an unjustifiable
retort, insinuating that the gentleman's remark was a sally of ebriety;
'Sir, there is one passion I would advise you to command: when you have
drunk out that glass, don't drink another.' Here was exemplified what
Goldsmith said of him, with the aid of a very witty image from one of
Cibber's Comedies: 'There is no arguing with Johnson; for if his pistol
misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.' Another was
this: when a gentleman of eminence in the literary world was violently
censured for attacking people by anonymous paragraphs in news-papers;
he, from the spirit of contradiction as I thought, took up his defence,
and said, 'Come, come, this is not so terrible a crime; he means only
to vex them a little.
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