offensive, when in the very nature of them they can only be meant to
attract admiration and regard. Jermyn had often been unconsciously disagreeable
to Johnson, over and above the constant offence of being an ostentatious patron.
He would never let Johnson dine with his wife and daughters; he would not
himself dine at Johnson's house when he was in town. He often did what was
equivalent to pooh-poohing his conversation by not even appearing to listen, and
by suddenly cutting it short with a query on a new subject. Jermyn was able and
politic enough to have commanded a great deal of success in his life, but he
could not help being handsome, arrogant, fond of being heard, indisposed to any
kind of comradeship, amorous and bland towards women, cold and self-contained
towards men. You will hear very strong denials that an attorney's being handsome
could enter into the dislike he excited; but conversation consists a good deal
in the denial of what is true. From the British point of view masculine beauty
is regarded very much as it is in the drapery business: as good solely for the
fancy department - for young noblemen, artists, poets, and the clergy. Some one
who, like Mr Lingon, was disposed to revile Jermyn (perhaps it was Sir Maximus),
had called him a cursed, sleek, handsome, long-winded, over-bearing sycophant;
epithets which expressed, rather confusedly, the mingled character of the
dislike he excited. And serviceable John Johnson, himself sleek, and mindful
about his broadcloth and his cambric fronts, had what he considered spirit
enough within him to feel that dislike of Jermyn gradually gathering force
through years of obligation and subjection, till it had become an actuating
motive disposed to use an opportunity, if not to watch for one.
    It was not this motive, however, but rather the ordinary course of business,
which accounted for Johnson's playing a double part as an electioneering agent.
What men do in elections is not to be classed either among sins or marks of
grace: it would be profane to include business in religion, and conscience
refers to failure, not to success. Still, the sense of being galled by Jermyn's
harness was an additional reason for cultivating all relations that were
independent of him; and pique at Harold Transome's behaviour to him in Jermyn's
office perhaps gave all the more zest to Johnson's use of his pen and ink when
he wrote a handbill in the service of Garstin, and Garstin's incomparable agent,
Putty, full of innuendoes against Harold