Admiration, esteem, or affection
may continue to be felt for one whom, from altered habits or new
ties, we can no longer receive as an inmate or an established member
of the family. Johnson was now in his seventy-fourth year, haunted by
the fear of death, and fond of dwelling nauseously on his ailments
and proposed remedies. From what passed at Brighton, it would seem
that there were moods in which he was positively unbearable, and
could not be received in a house without driving every one else out
of it. In a roomy mansion like Streatham he might be endured, because
he could be kept out of the way; but in an ordinary town-house or
small establishment, such a guest would resemble an elephant in a
private menagerie.
There is also a very great difference, when arrangements are to be
made for the domestication of a male visitor, between a family with a
male head, and one consisting exclusively of females. Let any widow
with daughters make the case her own, and imagine herself
domesticated in Argyll or Harley Street with the lexicographer. The
manly authority of Thrale was required to keep Johnson in order quite
as much as to steady the imputed flightiness of the lady; and his
idolaters must really remember that she was a sentient being, with
feelings and affections which she was fully entitled to consult in
arranging her scheme of life. When Lord Macaulay and his school
tacitly assume that these are to weigh as dust in the balance against
the claims of learning, they argue like sundry upholders of the
temporal sovereignty of the Pope, who contend that his subjects
should complacently endure any amount of oppression rather than
endanger (what they deem) the vital interests of the Church.
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