On this
account he wished to travel all over the world: for the very act of
going forward was delightful to him, and he gave himself no concern
about accidents, which he said never happened; nor did the
running-away of the horses at the edge of a precipice between Vernon
and St. Denys in France convince him to the contrary: 'for nothing
came of it,' he said, 'except that Mr. Thrale leaped out of the
carriage into a chalk-pit, and then came up again, looking as
_white_!' When the truth was, all their lives were saved by the
greatest providence ever exerted in favour of three human creatures:
and the part Mr. Thrale took from desperation was the likeliest thing
in the world to produce broken limbs and death."
The drawbacks on his gratification and on that of his fellow
travellers were his physical defects, and his utter insensibility to
the beauty of nature, as well as to the fine arts, in so far as they
were addressed to the senses of sight and hearing. "He delighted,"
says Mrs. Thrale, "no more in music than painting; he was almost as
deaf as he was blind; travelling with Dr. Johnson was, for these
reasons, tiresome enough. Mr. Thrale loved prospects, and was
mortified that his friend could not enjoy the sight of those
different dispositions of wood and water, hill and valley, that
travelling through England and France affords a man. But when he
wished to point them out to his companion: 'Never heed such
nonsense,' would be the reply: 'a blade of grass is always a blade of
grass, whether in one country or another: let us, if we _do_ talk,
talk about something; men and women are my subjects of inquiry; let
us see how these differ from those we have left behind.
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