1763. JOHNSON. "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done Etat. 54. well; but you are furprized to find it done at all.”

On Tuesday, August 2, (the day of my departure from London having been fixed for the 5th,) Dr. Johnfon did me the honour to pass a part of the morning with me at my Chambers. He faid, that he always felt an inclination to do nothing." I obferved, that it was ftrange to think that the most indolent man in Britain had written the most laborious work, THE ENGLISH DICTI

ONARY.

I mentioned an imprudent publication, by a certain friend of his, at an early period of life, and afked him if he thought it would hurt him. JOHNSON. "No, Sir; not much. It may, perhaps, be mentioned at an election."

I had now made good my title to be a privileged man, and was carried by him in the evening to drink tea with Mifs Williams, whom, though under the misfortune of having loft her fight, I found to be agreeable in conversation; for she had a variety of literature, and expreffed herself well; but her peculiar value was the intimacy in which fhe had long lived with Johnfon, by which fhe was well acquainted with his habits, and knew how to lead him on to talk.

After tea he carried me to what he called his walk, which was a long narrow paved court in the neighbourhood, overshadowed by fome trees. There we fauntered a confiderable time; and I complained to him that my love of London and of his company was fuch, that I fhrunk almost from the thought of going away even to travel,

which is generally fo much defired by young men. He roused me by manly and spirited converfation. He advised me, when fettled in any place abroad, to study with an eagernefs after knowledge, and to apply to Greek an hour every day; and when I was moving about, to read diligently the great book of mankind.

On Wednesday, August 3, we had our last social evening at the Turk's Head coffee-houfe, before my setting out for foreign parts. I had the misfortune, before we parted, to irritate him unintentionally. I mentioned to him how common it was in the world to tell abfurd stories of him, and to afcribe to him very ftrange fayings. JOHNSON. "What do they make me fay, Sir?" BOSWELL.

Why, Sir, as an inftance very ftrange indeed, (laughing heartily as I fpoke,) David Hume told me, you faid that you would stand before a battery of cannon, to reftore the Convocation to its full powers."-Little did I apprehend that he had actually faid this; but I was foon convinced of my errour; for, with a determined look, he thundered out, "And would I not, Sir? Shall the Prefbyterian Kirk of Scotland have its General Affembly, and the Church of England be denied its Convocation?" He was walking up and down the room while I told him the anecdote; but when he uttered this explosion of high-church zeal, he had come close to my chair, and his eyes flafhed with indignation. I bowed to the ftorm, and diverted the force of it, by leading him to expatiate on the influence which religion derived from maintaining the church with great external refpectability.

I must

1763

Etat. 54

1763.

Etat. 54.

I must not omit to mention that he this year wrote "The Life of Afcham,t" and the Dedication to the Earl of Shaftesbury,† prefixed to the edition of that writer's English works, published by Mr. Bennet.

On Friday, Auguft 5, we fet out early in the morning in the Harwich ftage coach. A fat elderly gentlewoman, and a young Dutchman, feemed the most inclined among us to converfation. At the inn where we dined, the gentlewoman faid that fhe had done her beft to educate her children; and, particularly, that she had never fuffered them to be a moment idle. JOHNSON. "I wish, Madam, you would educate me too; for I have been an idle fellow all my life." " I am fure, Sir, (faid fhe) you have not been idle." JOHNSON. "Nay, Madam, it is very true; and that gentleman there (pointing to me,) has been idle. He was idle at Edinburgh. His father fent him to Glasgow, where he continued to be idle. He then came to London, where he has been very idle; and now he is going to Utrecht, where he will be as idle as ever." I asked him privately how he could expofe me fo. JOHNSON, "Poh, poh! (faid he) they knew nothing about you, and will think of it no more." In the afternoon the gentlewoman talked violently against the Roman Catholicks, and of the horrours of the Inquifition. To the utter aftonishment of all the paffengers but myself, who knew that he could talk upon any fide of a question, he defended the Inquifition, and maintained, that "falfe doctrine should be checked on its first appearance; that the civil

5

power should

unite

1763.

unite with the church in punishing those who dared to attack the established religion, and that such Ætat. 54only were punished by the Inquifition." He had in his pocket " Pomponius Mela de fitu Orbis," in which he read occafionally, and feemed very intent upon ancient geography. Though by no means niggardly, his attention to what was generally right was fo minute, that having óbferved at one of the ftages that I oftentatiously gave a fhilling to the coachman, when the custom was for each paffenger to give only fix-pence, he took me afide and'scolded me, faying that what I had done would make the coachman diffatisfied with all the reft of the passengers, who gave him no more than his due. This was a juft reprimand; for in whatever way a man may indulge his generofity or his vanity in fpending his money, for the fake of others he ought not to raise the price of any article for which there is a conftant demand.

He talked of Mr. Blacklock's poetry, fo far as it was defcriptive of visible objects; and obferved, that "as its authour had the misfortune to be blind, we may be abfolutely fure that fuch paffages are combinations of what he has remembered of the works of other writers who could fee. That foolish fellow, Spence, has laboured to explain philofophically how Blacklock may have done, by means of his own faculties, what it is impoffible he fhould do. The folution, as I have given it, is plain. Suppofe, I know a man to be fo lame that he is abfolutely incapable to move himself, and I find him in a different room from that in which I left him; fhall I puzzle myself with idle conjectures,

1763. jectures, that, perhaps, his nerves have by fome unknown change all at once become effective? No, Sir; it is clear how he got into a different room: he was carried."

Etat. 54

Having stopped a night at Colchester, Johnson talked of that town with veneration, for having ftood a fiege for Charles the Firft. The Dutchman alone now remained with us.

He spoke English tolerably well; and thinking to recommend himself to us by expatiating on the fuperiority of the criminal jurisprudence of this country over that of Holland, he inveighed against the barbarity of putting an accused person to the torture, in order to force a confeffion. But Johnson was as ready for this, as for the Inquifition. "Why, Sir, you do not, I find, understand the law of your own country. The torture in Holland is confidered as a favour to an accufed perfon; for no man is put to the torture there, unless there is as much evidence against him as would amount to conviction in England. An accused person among you, therefore, has one chance more to escape punishment, than those who are tried among us."

"

At fupper this night he talked of good eating with uncommon fatisfaction. "Some people (faid he,) have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind any thing else." He now appeared to me Jean Bull philofophe, and he was, for the moment, not only serious but vehement. Yet I have heard him, upon other occafions,