But in Johnson we have the two extremes brought together.
He was the most gregarious of men; he loved company so well that he
would follow his friends to the very threshold, in the hope, as he
once told Boswell, that they might perhaps return. When he was
alone and undistracted, his melancholy came back upon him like a
cloud. He tortured himself over the unprofitableness of his life,
over his failure to achieve official prominence. He does not seem
to have brooded over the favourite subject for Englishmen to lose
heart over, namely, his financial position. It is a very
significant fact in our English life that if at an inquest upon a
suicide it can be established that a man has financial
difficulties, a verdict of temporary insanity is instantly
conceded. Loss of property rather than loss of affection is the
thing which the Englishman thinks is likely to derange a man. But
Johnson seems never to have been afraid of poverty, nor to have
ever troubled about fame. He was very angry once when it was
laughingly suggested to him that if he had gone to the Bar he might
have been Lord Chancellor; and I have no doubt, as I have said,
that one of his uncomfortable reflections was that he did not seem
to himself to be in a position of influence and authority.
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