And when one of his lady admirers, engaged in defending
him, was reminded that he squinted badly, she replied: "Of course he does;
but he doesn't squint more than a man of his genius ought to squint." Nor
was it women alone whom the fellow fascinated. Who can forget the scene
when Tom Davies brought him into the company of Dr. Johnson, who hated
Wilkes' Radicalism, and would never willingly have consented to meet him?
For a time Johnson refused to unbend, but at last he could hold out no
longer, and fell a victim to the charm of Wilkes' talk.
In the same way, Johnson believed his wife to be a woman of perfect beauty.
To the rest of the world she was extraordinarily plain and commonplace, but
to Johnson she was the mirror of beauty. "Pretty creature," he would say
with a sigh in referring to her after her death.
And there, I fancy, we touch the root of the matter. The sense of beauty is
in one respect an affair of the soul, and only superficially an aesthetic
quality. We start with a common prejudice in favour of certain physical
forms.
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