' BOSWELL. 'She must have been an
animal, a beast.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, she was a speaking cat.'
I mentioned to him that I had become very weary in a company where I
heard not a single intellectual sentence, except that 'a man who had
been settled ten years in Minorca was become a much inferiour man to
what he was in London, because a man's mind grows narrow in a narrow
place.' JOHNSON. 'A man's mind grows narrow in a narrow place, whose
mind is enlarged only because he has lived in a large place: but what is
got by books and thinking is preserved in a narrow place as well as in a
large place. A man cannot know modes of life as well in Minorca as in
London; but he may study mathematicks as well in Minorca.' BOSWELL. 'I
don't know, Sir: if you had remained ten years in the Isle of Col, you
would not have been the man that you now are.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, if I
had been there from fifteen to twenty-five; but not if from twenty-five
to thirty-five.' BOSWELL. 'I own, Sir, the spirits which I have in
London make me do every thing with more readiness and vigour. I can talk
twice as much in London as any where else[697].'
Of Goldsmith he said, 'He was not an agreeable companion, for he talked
always for fame[698].
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