Langton was sitting
by him, he read one of them very eagerly, and expressed himself
thus:--'Very well, Master Reynolds; very well, indeed. But it will not
be understood.'
When I observed to him that Painting was so far inferiour to Poetry,
that the story or even emblem which it communicates must be previously
known, and mentioned as a natural and laughable instance of this, that
a little Miss on seeing a picture of Justice with the scales, had
exclaimed to me, 'See, there's a woman selling sweetmeats;' he said,
'Painting, Sir, can illustrate, but cannot inform.'
No man was more ready to make an apology when he had censured unjustly,
than Johnson. When a proof-sheet of one of his works was brought to him,
he found fault with the mode in which a part of it was arranged, refused
to read it, and in a passion desired that the compositor might be sent
to him. The compositor was Mr. Manning, a decent sensible man, who
had composed about one half of his Dictionary, when in Mr. Strahan's
printing-house; and a great part of his Lives of the Poets, when in
that of Mr.
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