I remain, Sir, Faithfully and Respectfully yours, STEPHEN COLERIDGE. It gives me peculiar pleasure to bring up this letter from the now distant past; thirty-two years have not made me wish to withdraw or change a word of it. CHAPTER VII: DR. JOHNSON Of all the Masters of letters that have adorned and elevated the speech of our race Dr. Johnson is in many ways the most lovable. The son of a poor bookseller in Lichfield {40} with an uncouth figure and an undistinguished countenance, he rose by the massive force of his character and the tireless persistence of his industry to an unchallenged supremacy in the literary world of his age, displaying in his whole life the truth of his own dictum that "few things are impossible to diligence and skill." Disdaining the common habit of the times he would owe nothing to the patronage of the great. "Is not a patron," he wrote to Lord Chesterfield, "one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help?" [Picture: Dr. Johnson. From a contemporary etching published February 10th, 1780] He was not very patient with the stupid, or merciful to the absurd, and vanity never came into his presence without receiving swift and mortal blows; but the chastisement of his caustic tongue never fell upon modest worth, and there never lived a man who was a more faithful and affectionate friend. The style of his writing is always balanced and sonorous, and everywhere and always is he "the friend of the wise and teacher of the good." No man was more ready to give forcible expression to his amusing prejudices, as when he exclaimed that "the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England," but to be able to assert of any act of man that Dr. Johnson in solemn seriousness condemned it, is for ever to arraign that act in the court of human morals; and so the judicious must concede that when his authority can be cited in fierce and glowing denunciation of vivisectors they are left in a demersed condition. I took occasion when giving evidence before the last Royal Commission on Vivisection to rehearse Dr. Johnson's philippic which I now reproduce below, and the dejected and deflated aspect of the vivisectors on the commission when I had finished it caused that moment to be one of those I shall always recall with exhilaration! Not a word had one of them to say while I waited for any comment they might adventure, and after a diverting and eloquent silence Lord Selby from the chair remarked, "That leaves no doubt about Dr. Johnson's view in his day." It most certainly does not!