Johnson loved to argue, and
he made a point of always getting the best of an argument. If he
could not do so by reason, he simply roared his opponent down and
silenced him by sheer rudeness. "There is no arguing with
Johnson," said one of his friends, Oliver Goldsmith, "for when
his pistol misses fire he knocks you down with the butt end of
it." And perhaps Goldy, as Johnson called him, had to suffer
more rudeness from him than any of his friends to save Bozzy.
Yet the three were often to be found together, and it was
Goldsmith who said of Johnson, "No man alive has a more tender
heart. He has nothing of the bear but his skin."
And indeed in Johnson's outward appearance there was much of the
bear. He was a sloven in dress. His clothes were shabby and
thrown on anyhow. "I have no passion for clean linen," he said
himself. At table he made strange noises and ate greedily, yet
in spite of all that, added to his noted temper and rude manners,
men loved him and sought his company more than that of any other
writer of his day, for "within that shaggy exterior of his there
beat a heart warm as a mother's, soft as a little child's.
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