His Lordship told us, that Foote had intended to bring
on the stage a father who had thus tutored his son, and to shew the son
an honest man to every one else, but practising his father's maxims upon
him, and cheating him. JOHNSON. 'I am much pleased with this design;
but I think there was no occasion to make the son honest at all. No; he
should be a consummate rogue: the contrast between honesty and knavery
would be the stronger. It should be contrived so that the father should
be the only sufferer by the son's villainy, and thus there would be
poetical justice.'
A young gentleman present took up the argument against him, and
maintained that no man ever thinks of the NOSE OF THE MIND, not
adverting that though that figurative sense seems strange to us, as very
unusual, it is truly not more forced than Hamlet's 'In my MIND'S EYE,
Horatio.' He persisted much too long, and appeared to Johnson as putting
himself forward as his antagonist with too much presumption; upon which
he called to him in a loud tone, 'What is it you are contending for, if
you BE contending?' And afterwards imagining that the gentleman retorted
upon him with a kind of smart drollery, he said, 'Mr.
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