Dr Johnson & Fanny Burney; being the Johnsonian passages from the works of Mme D'Arblay; . at good-humour,^ be whatwill in the opposite scale. He entertained us all as If hired for that purpose,telling stories of Dr. Johnson, and acting them withincessant buffoonery. I told him frankly that if heturned him Into ridicule by caricature, I should flythe premises: he assured me he would not, and indeed,his imitations, though comic to excess, were so farfrom caricature that he omitted a thousand gesticu-lations which I distinctly remember. Mr. Langton told some stories himself ^ In Imlta- * See abo
Dr Johnson & Fanny Burney; being the Johnsonian passages from the works of Mme D'Arblay; . at good-humour,^ be whatwill in the opposite scale. He entertained us all as If hired for that purpose,telling stories of Dr. Johnson, and acting them withincessant buffoonery. I told him frankly that if heturned him Into ridicule by caricature, I should flythe premises: he assured me he would not, and indeed,his imitations, though comic to excess, were so farfrom caricature that he omitted a thousand gesticu-lations which I distinctly remember. Mr. Langton told some stories himself ^ In Imlta- * See above, pp. 201 ff. He was one of Boswells most fertile sources of Johnsonian in-formation. See Life, 2o8 Dr. Johnson & Fanny Burney [1792 tion of Dr. Johnson; but they became him less thanMr. Boswell, and only reminded of what Dr. John-son himself once said to me— Every man has sometime in his life, an ambition to be a wag. If had repeated anything from his truly greatfriend quietly, it would far better have accorded withhis own serious and respectable character. \. rr^ Ail. V-^lvr*^-*. The proof of the frontispiece to Boswells /-//<, with in Boswells handwriting (First state of an engraving by Heath, from a portrait by Reynolds)
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectjohnsonsamuel1709178
