In spite of his uncouth habits of dress and manners, Johnson claimed and, in a sense, with justice, to be a polite man.  “I look upon myself,” he said once to Boswell, “as a very polite man.”  He could show the stately courtesy of a sound Tory, who cordially accepts the principle of social distinction, but has far too strong a sense of self-respect to fancy that compliance with the ordinary conventions can possibly lower his own position.  Rank of the spiritual kind was especially venerable to him.  “I should as soon have thought of contradicting a bishop,” was a phrase which marked the highest conceivable degree of deference to a man whom he respected.  Nobody, again, could pay more effective compliments, when he pleased; and the many female friends who have written of him agree, that he could be singularly attractive to women.  Women are, perhaps, more inclined than men to forgive external roughness in consideration of the great charm of deep tenderness in a thoroughly masculine nature.  A characteristic phrase was his remark to Miss Monckton.  She had declared, in opposition to one of Johnson’s prejudices, that Sterne’s writings were pathetic:  “I am sure,” she said, “they have affected me.”  “Why,” said Johnson, smiling and rolling himself about, “that is because, dearest, you are a dunce!” When she mentioned this to him some time afterwards he replied:  “Madam, if I had thought so, I certainly should not have said it.”  The truth could not be more neatly put.

Boswell notes, with some surprise, that when Johnson dined with Lord Monboddo he insisted upon rising when the ladies left the table, and took occasion to observe that politeness was “fictitious benevolence,” and equally useful in common intercourse.  Boswell’s surprise seems to indicate that Scotchmen in those days were even greater bears than Johnson.  He always insisted, as Miss Reynolds tells us, upon showing ladies to their carriages through Bolt Court, though his dress was such that her readers would, she thinks, be astonished that any man in his senses should have shown himself in it abroad or even at home.  Another odd indication of Johnson’s regard for good manners, so far as his lights would take him, was the extreme disgust with which he often referred to a certain footman in Paris, who used his fingers in place of sugar-tongs.  So far as Johnson could recognize bad manners he was polite enough, though unluckily the limitation is one of considerable importance.

Johnson’s claims to politeness were sometimes, it is true, put in a rather startling form.  “Every man of any education,” he once said to the amazement of his hearers, “would rather be called a rascal than accused of deficiency in the graces.”  Gibbon, who was present, slily inquired of a lady whether among all her acquaintance she could not find one exception.  According to Mrs. Thrale, he went even further.  Dr. Barnard, he said, was the only man who had ever done justice to his good