' Payne's _Burke_, i. 10, 11. 'Influence,'
said Johnson,' must ever be in proportion to property; and it is right it
should.' Boswell's _Hebrides_, Aug. 18. To political life might be applied
what Johnson wrote of domestic life:--'It is a maxim that no man ever was
enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free.' _Notes and Queries_,
6th S., v. 343.
[585] Boswell falls into what he calls 'the cant transmitted from age to
age in praise of the ancient Romans.' _Ante_, i. 311. To do so with
Johnson was at once to provoke an attack, for he looked upon the Roman
commonwealth as one 'which grew great only by the misery of the rest of
mankind.' _Ib_. Moreover he disliked appeals to history. 'General
history,' writes Murphy (_Life_, p. 138), 'had little of his regard.
Biography was his delight. Sooner than hear of the Punic War he
would be rude to the person that introduced the subject.' Mrs. Piozzi
says (_Anec_. p. 80) that 'no kind of conversation pleased him less, I
think, than when the subject was historical fact or general polity.
'What shall we learn from _that_ stuff?' said he. 'He never,' as he
expressed it, 'desired to hear of the _Punic War_ while he lived.
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