'[990] At another time, talking
of the same person, he observed, 'Sir, your assent to a man whom you
have never known to falsify, is a debt: but after you have known a man
to falsify, your assent to him then is a favour.'
Though he had no taste for painting, he admired much the manner in which
Sir Joshua Reynolds treated of his art, in his _Discourses to the Royal
Academy_[991]. He observed one day of a passage in them, 'I think I
might as well have said this myself: 'and once when Mr. Langton was
sitting by him, he read one of them very eagerly, and expressed himself
thus:--'Very well, Master Reynolds; very well, indeed. But it will not
be understood.'
When I observed to him that Painting was so far inferiour to Poetry,
that the story or even emblem which it communicates must be previously
known, and mentioned as a natural and laughable instance of this, that a
little Miss on seeing a picture of Justice with the scales, had
exclaimed to me, 'See, there's a woman selling sweetmeats;' he said,
'Painting, Sir, can illustrate, but cannot inform.'
No man was more ready to make an apology when he had censured unjustly,
than Johnson[992].
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