'Brought to the Test of Real Life'

On this date, April 16, Easter Sunday in 1775. James Boswell attended services in St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Afterwards he dined with Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Williams. His account of the meal begins:

“I maintained that Horace was wrong in placing happiness in Nil admirari, for that I thought admiration one of the most agreeable of all our feelings; and I regretted that I had lost much of my disposition to admire, which people generally do as they advance in life.”

The Latin tag is from the opening lines of Horace’s Epistle I.6 and can be rendered as “to be surprised by nothing” or “to wonder at nothing.” Here is Alexander Pope’s version (1684), which is closer to Boswell’s understanding:

“Not to admire, as most are wont to do,

It is the only method that I know,

To make Men happy, and to keep ’em so.”

Unlike Boswell, my willingness to admire has grown with age. When young I was too proud and cynical to make room for admiration, as though it somehow diminished me to revere another. Today, the list of people I admire is long, beginning with Dr. Johnson, who was admired by Boswell above all men. To admire someone is not to judge them as flawless but to recognize their gifts in spite of their flaws. Boswell continues:

“JOHNSON. ‘Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration—judgement, to estimate things at their true value.’ I still insisted that admiration was more pleasing than judgement, as love is more pleasing than friendship. The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne. JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir; admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgement and friendship like being enlivened. Waller has hit upon the same thought with you: but I don't believe you have borrowed from Waller. I wish you would enable yourself to borrow more.’”

Johnson alludes to Edmund Waller’s “To Amoret,” in particular these lines:

“Amoret! as sweet and good

As the most delicious food,

Which but tasted does impart

Life and gladness to the heart.”

The dinner conversation shifts. Boswell writes:

“He then took occasion to enlarge on the advantages of reading, and combated the idle superficial notion, that knowledge enough may be acquired in conversation. ‘The foundation (said he,) must be laid by reading. General principles must be had from books, which, however, must be brought to the test of real life. In conversation you never get a system. What is said upon a subject is to be gathered from a hundred people. The parts of a truth, which a man gets thus, are at such a distance from each other that he never attains to a full view.’”

Most good conversation is entertaining rather than educational. The ideal conversationalist embodies qualities seldom found in combination: broad learning and experience, a robust sense of humor, casual eloquence, wittiness and deference to others (no lecturing, please). And no earnest pedantry. Johnson puts it admirably: “General principles must be had from books, which, however, must be brought to the test of real life.”

[In his “Life of Waller” in Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Johnson writes: “Among Waller’s little poems are some, which their excellency ought to secure from oblivion; as, ‘To Amoret,’ comparing the different modes of regard with which he looks on her and ‘Sacharissa,’ and the verses ‘On Love,’ that begin ‘Anger in hasty words or blows.’”]