JOHNSON ON GOLF.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1313, 16 December 1911, Page 9

JOHNSON ON GOLF.

What some ingenious person conceives that Dr. Jolmson might have said aljout golf is given in an alleged unpublished manuscript by Boswell, said to have como to ii-'ht in London, intended for inclusion in tho "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides." The. dictator ami his worshipper are supbosed to have arrived at the Blue Post, Edinburgh. Soon the conversation turns !o golf. "Sir," roars Johnson, "it is .a' diversion for imbeciles." "Have yon' ever seen it played?" asks Boswell. "Why* p.o, sir; 1 am happy to say that I never have. But I have heard one of your barbarous compatriots describe it, and his description sufficed. Sir, it is a lamentable reflection that -any sentient being, presumably possessing a soul, and having*soine rudiments of intelligence, should - discover a fascination in propelling a spherical bundle of feathers with .i bent stick into a succession of terranean orifices." ' "But," objects Boswell, "the propulsion is not so simple or so foolish ns it looks. For tho orifices are small, and the intervals between thorn are long, so that it demands no little strength and adroitness to play the ball from ono to the other." "Sir," replies the doctor, "it may be as you sav. Nevertheless, iho fatuity of the "proceeding is not thereby at all diminkhed. For, assuming that any object whatever is to be gained by deposit: wr the ball successively in a number of orifices, that object would bo moat rapidly and efficiently achieved by carrying it in the hand from orificc to orifice, rather than by propolling it laboriously—and often, I understand, erratically—with an egregious instrument ridiculously ill-suited to tho purpose." "It is the difficulty of the metliod," explains Boswell,' "that constitutes the charm." t "Sir," is tho crushing reply, "if I should choose to shave myself with an oyster shell instead of a razor, there would bo no harm in it; but it would be none the less the height of imbecility." Johnson is, however, led to try tho game through his determiratlon to demonstrate the superiority of the Englishman over the Scotsman at whatever he chooses to test his skill upon. "Boswell" givt-s the result: Still less shall I specify the robust phraseology wherewith he vituperated the little sphere of feathers, as now it eluded the orifice into which he at lergth was sure he had tapped it. Let it be enough to say that, exasperated out of all patience, he concluded by addressing the inanimate'objcct of his indignation in the following : severe terms,.' perse v'tying it so as to lend greater force to his remarks: "Sir, it is abundantly evident that you are Nothirg else could account f0r...50 "demoniacal on exhibition of glolhilnr pcr'vicacity:" Having said that, he turned to Gotulie and hurled his golf sticks at him one after tho other, exclaiming: "Sir, take fcbeni away and bnrv them and tbatdegian of little feather devils along with them. I assorted from the first that this futile diversion was beneath the level of the lowest human intelligence; now I go fnrther and deliberately pronounre it below the cerebral capacity of a Barbary ape."