When Goldsmith once talked to Johnson of the difficulty of living on
very intimate terms with any one with whom you differed on an important
topic, Johnson replied: “Why, sir, _you must shun the subject as to
which you disagree_. For instance, I can live very well with Burke; I
love his knowledge, his genius, his diffusion, and effulgence of
conversation; but I would not talk to him of the Rockingham party.”
Mr. Helps, in his admirable work, _Friends in Council_, well observes:
“A rule for living happily with others is to avoid having stock subjects
of disputation. It mostly happens, when people live much together, that
they come to have certain set topics, around which, from frequent
dispute, there is such a growth of angry words, mortified vanity, and
the like, that the original difference becomes a standing subject for
quarrel; and there is a tendency in all minor disputes to drift down to
it. Again: if people wish to live well together, they must not hold too
much to logic, and supposing every thing is to be settled by sufficient
reason. Dr. Johnson saw this clearly with regard to married people when
he said, ‘Wretched would be the pair, above all names of wretchedness,
who should be doomed to adjust by reason every morning all the minute
detail of a domestic day.’ But the application should be much more
general than he made it. There is no time for such reasonings, and
nothing that is worth them. And when we recollect how two lawyers, or
two politicians, can go on contending, and that there is no end of
one-sided reasoning on any subject, we shall not be sure that such
contention is the best mode for arriving at truth. But certainly it is
not the way to arrive at good temper.”
The most gifted men are least addicted to depreciate either friends or
foes. Dr. Johnson, Mr. Burke, and Mr. Fox were always more inclined to
overrate them; your shrewd, sly, evil-speaking fellow is generally a
shallow person; and frequently he is as venomous, as false when he
flatters as when he reviles. He seldom praises John but to vex Thomas.
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