"Whilst he went on talking triumphantly," says Boswell, "I was fixed
in admiration, and said to Mrs. Thrale, 'O for short-hand to take
this down!' 'You'll carry it all in your head,' said she; 'a long
head is as good as short-hand.'" On his boasting of the efficiency of
his own system of short-hand to Johnson, he was put to the test and
failed.
Mrs. Piozzi at once admits and accounts for the inferiority of her
own collection of anecdotes, when she denounces "a trick which I have
seen played on common occasions, of sitting steadily down at the
other end of the room, to write at the moment what should be said in
company, either _by_ Dr. Johnson or _to_ him, I never practised
myself, nor approved of in another. There is something so ill-bred,
and so inclining to treachery in this conduct, that were it commonly
adopted, all confidence would soon be exiled from society, and a
conversation assembly room would become tremendous as a court of
justice." This is a hit at Boswell, who (as regards Johnson himself)
had full licence to take notes the best way he could. Madame
D'Arblay's are much fuller, and bear a suspicious resemblance to the
dialogues in her novels.
In a reply to Boswell, dated December 14th, 1793, Miss Seward
pointedly remarks:
"Dr. Johnson's frequently-expressed contempt for Mrs. Thrale on
account of that want of veracity which he imputes to her, at least as
Mr. Boswell has recorded, either convicts him of narrating what
Johnson never said, or Johnson himself of that insincerity of which
there are too many instances, amidst all the recorded proofs of his
unprovoked personal rudeness, to those with whom he conversed; for,
this repeated contempt was coeval with his published letters, which
express such high and perfect esteem for that lady, which declare
that 'to hear her, was to hear Wisdom, that to see her, was to see
Virtue.
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