in the coach, and smiling with much complacency, he turned to me and said, 'I look upon myself as a good-humoured fellow.' The epithet fellow, applied to the great Lexicographer, the stately Moralist, the masterly Critic, as if it had been Sam Johnson, a mere pleasant companion, was highly diverting; and this light notion of himself struck me with wonder. I answered, also smiling, 'No, no, sir; that will not do. You are good-natured, but not good-humoured; you are irascible. You have not patience with folly and absurdity. I believe you would pardon them, if there were time to deprecate your vengeance; but punishment follows so quick after sentence that they cannot escape.'

but in the second place, whether he thinks so or not, he certainly thinks those whom he flatters of consequence enough to be flattered.'

I

No sooner had we made our bow to Mr. Cambridge, in his library, than Johnson ran eagerly to one side of the room, intent on poring over the backs of the books. 1 Sir Joshua observed (aside), 'He runs to the books as I do to the pictures; but I have the advantage. can see much more of the pictures than he can of the books.' Mr. Cambridge, upon this, politely said, 'Dr. Johnson, I am going, with your pardon, to accuse myself, for I have the same custom which I perceive you have. But it seems odd that one should have such a desire to look at the backs of books.' Johnson, ever ready for contest, instantly started from his reverie, wheeled about and answered, 'Sir, the reason is very plain. Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we inquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it. This leads us to look at cata

I had brought with me a great bundle of Scotch magazines and newspapers, in which his Journey to the Western Islands was attacked in every mode; and I read a great part of them to him, knowing they would afford him entertainment. I wish the writers of them had been present; they would have been sufficiently vexed. One ludicrous imitation of his style, by Mr. Maclaurin, now one of the Scotch judges, with the title of Lord Dreghorn, was distin-logues, and the backs of books in libraries.' guished by him from the rude mass. 'This,' said he, is the best. But I could caricature my own style much better myself.' He defended his remark upon the general insufficiency of education in Scotland; and he confirmed to me the authenticity of his witty saying on the learning of the Scotch :-Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal.' 'There is,' said he, 'in Scotland a diffusion of learning, a certain portion of it widely and thinly spread. A merchant has as much learning as one of their clergy.'

He talked of Isaac Walton's Lives, which was one of his most favourite books. Dr. Donne's Life, he said, was the most perfect of them. He observed, that it was wonderful that Walton, who was in a very low situation of life, should have been familiarly received by so many great men, and that at a time when the ranks of society were kept more separate than they are now.' He supposed that Walton had then given up his business as a linen-draper and sempster, and was only an author; and added, that he was a great panegyrist.' BosWELL: No quality will get a man more friends than a disposition to admire the qualities of others. I do not mean flattery, but a sincere admiration.' JOHNSON: 'Nay, sir, flattery pleases very generally. In the first place, the flatterer may think what he says to be true;

1 Johnson's conjecture was erroneous. Walton did not retire from business till 1643. But in 1664 Dr. King, Bishop of Chichester, in a letter prefixed to his Lives, mentions his having been familiarly acquainted with him for forty years; and in 1631 he was so intimate with Dr. Donne, that he was one of the friends who attended him on his death-bed.-J. BOSWELL, jun.

Sir Joshua observed to me the extraordinary promptitude with which Johnson flew upon an argument. 'Yes,' said I, 'he has no formal preparation, no flourishing with his sword, he is through your body in an instant.'

Johnson was here solaced with an elegant entertainment, a very accomplished family, and much good company; among whom was Mr. Harris, of Salisbury, who paid him many compliments on his Journey to the Western Islands.

The common remark as to the utility of reading history being made:- JOHNSON : 'We must consider how very little history there is; I mean real authentic history. That certain kings reigned, and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true; but all the colouring, all the philosophy of history, is conjecture.' BOSWELL: Then, sir, you would reduce all history to no better than an almanac, a mere chronological series of remarkable events.' Mr. Gibbon, who must at that time have been employed upon his history, of which he published the first volume in the following year, was present, but did not step forth in defence of that species of writing. He probably did not like to trust himself with Johnson.

Johnson observed that the force of our early habits was so great, that though reason approved, nay, though our senses relished a different course, almost every man returned to them. I

1 The first time he dined with me, he was shown into my book-room, and instantly pored over the lettering of each volume within his reach. My collection of books is very miscellaneous, and I feared there might be some among them that he would not like. But seeing the number of volumes very considerable, he said, 'You are an honest man to have formed so great an accumulation of knowledge.'-BURNEY.

I did not see Dr. Johnson for a considerable time, and during the remaining part of my stay in London kept very imperfect notes of his con

custom, written out at large soon after the time, much might have been preserved which is now irretrievably lost. I can now only record some particular scenes, and a few fragments of his memorabilia. But to make some amends for my relaxation of diligence in one respect, I have to present my readers with arguments upon two law cases, with which he favoured me. On Saturday the sixth of May we dined by ourselves at the Mitre, and he dictated to me what follows, to obviate the complaint already mentioned, which had been made in the form of an action in the Court of Session, by Dr. Memis of Aberdeen, that in the same translation of a charter in which physicians were mentioned, he was called Doctor of Medicine :

with them; and, above all, to his satire being directed against those whom a little while before they had hated and feared. The nation in general has ever been loyal, has been at allversation, which had I, according to my usual times attached to the monarch, though a few daring rebels have been wonderfully powerful for a time. The murder of Charles the First was undoubtedly not committed with the approbation or consent of the people. Had that been the case, Parliament would not have ventured to consign the regicides to their deserved punishment; and we know what exuberance of joy there was when Charles the Second was restored. If Charles the Second had bent all his mind to it, had made it his sole object, he might have been as absolute as Louis the Fourteenth.' A gentleman observed, he would have done no harm if he had. JOHNSON: 'Why, sir, absolute princes seldom do any harm. But they who are governed by them are governed by chance. There is no security for good government.' CAMBRIDGE: There have been many sad victims to absolute government.' JOHNSON: So, sir, have there been to popular factions.' BOSWELL: The question is, which is worst, one wild beast or many?'

Johnson praised The Spectator, particularly the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. He said, 'Sir Roger did not die a violent death, as has been generally fancied. He was not killed; he died only because others were to die, and because his death afforded an opportunity to Addison for some very fine writing. We have the example of Cervantes making Don Quixote die. I never could see why Sir Roger is represented as a little cracked. It appears to me that the story of the widow was intended to have something superinduced upon it; but the superstructure did not come.'

Somebody found fault with writing verses in a dead language, maintaining that they were merely arrangements of so many words, and laughed at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge for sending forth collections of them not only in Greek and Latin, but even in Syriac, Arabic, and other more unknown tongues. JOHNSON: 'I would have as many of these as possible; I would have verses in every language that there are the means of acquiring. Nobody imagines that an university is to have at once two hundred poets; but it should be able to show two hundred scholars. Peiresc's death was lamented, I think, in forty languages. And I would have had at every coronation, and every death of a king, every Gaudium, and every Luctus, university-verses, in as many languages as can be acquired. I would have the world to be thus told, "Here is a school where everything may be learnt."

Having set out next day on a visit to the Earl of Pembroke at Wilton, and to my friend Mr. Temple at Mamhead, in Devonshire, and not having returned to town till the second of May,

'There are but two reasons for which a physician can decline the title of Doctor of Medicine: because he supposes himself disgraced by the doctorship, or supposes the doctorship disgraced by himself. To be disgraced by a title which he shares in common with every illustrious name of his profession, with Boerhaave, with Arbuthnot, and with Cullen, can surely diminish no man's reputation. It is, I suppose, to the doctorate from which he shrinks, that he holds his rights of practising physic. A Doctor of Medicine is a physician under the protection of the laws, and by the stamp of authority. The physician who is not a doctor usurps a profession, and is authorized only by himself to decide upon health and sickness, and life and death. That this gentleman is a doctor, his diploma makes evident; a diploma not obtruded upon him, but obtained by solicitation, and for which fees were paid. With what countenance any man can refuse the title which he has either begged or bought, is not easily discovered.

'All verbal injury must comprise in it either some false position or some unnecessary declaration of defamatory truth. That in calling him Doctor, a false appellation was given him, he himself will not pretend, who at the same time that he complains of the title would be offended if we supposed him to be not a Doctor. If the title of Doctor be a defamatory truth, it is time to dissolve our colleges; for why should the public give salaries to men whose approbation is reproach? It may likewise deserve the notice of the public to consider what help can be given to the professors of physic, who all share with this unhappy gentleman the ignominious appellation, and of whom the very boys in the street are not afraid to say, 'There goes the Doctor.'

'What is implied by the term Doctor is well known. It distinguishes him to whom it is granted, as a man who has attained such know

ledge of his profession as qualifies him to instruct others. A Doctor of Laws is a man who can form lawyers by his precepts. A Doctor of Medicine is a man who can teach the art of curing diseases. This is an old axiom which no man has yet thought fit to deny, Nil dat quod non habet. Upon this principle, to be Doctor implies skill, for nemo docet quod non didicit. In England, whoever practises physic, not being a Doctor, must practise by a licence; but the doctorate conveys a licence in itself.

'By what accident it happened that he and the other physicians were mentioned in different terms, where the terms themselves were equivalent, or where, in effect, that which was applied to him was the most honourable, perhaps they who wrote the paper cannot now remember. Had they expected a lawsuit to have been the consequence of such petty variation, I hope they would have avoided it.' But probably, as they meant no ill, they suspected no danger, and therefore consulted only what appeared to them propriety or convenience.'

A few days afterwards, I consulted him upon a cause, Paterson and others against Alexander and others, which had been decided by a casting vote in the Court of Session, determining that the Corporation of Stirling was corrupt, and setting aside the election of some of their officers because it was proved that three of the leading men who influenced the majority had entered into an unjustifiable compact, of which, however, the majority were ignorant. He dictated to me, after a little consideration, the following sentences upon the subject :

'There is a difference between majority and superiority; majority is applied to number, and superiority to power; and power, like many other things, is to be estimated non numero sed pondere. Now though the greater number is not corrupt, the greater weight is corrupt, so that corruption predominates in the borough, taken collectively, though perhaps, taken numerically, the greater part may be uncorrupt. That borough which is so constituted as to act corruptly, is in the eye of reason corrupt, whether it be by the uncontrollable power of a few, or by an accidental pravity of the multitude. The objection in which is urged the injustice of making the innocent suffer with the guilty, is an objection not only against society, but against the possibility of society. All societies, great and small, subsist upon this condition: that as the individuals derive advantages from union, they may likewise suffer inconveniences; that as those who do nothing, and sometimes those who do ill, will have the honours and emoluments of general virtue and general prosperity, so those

1 In justice to Dr. Memis, though I was against him as an advocate, I must mention that he objected to the variation very earnestly, before the translation was printed off.-BOSWELL.

likewise who do nothing, or perhaps do well, must be involved in the consequences of predominant corruption.'

This, in my opinion, was a very nice case; but the decision was affirmed in the House of Lords.

On Monday, May 8, we went together and visited the mansions of Bedlam. I had been informed that he had once been there before with Mr. Wedderburn (now Lord Loughborough), Mr. Murphy, and Mr. Foote; and I had heard Foote give a very entertaining account of Johnson's happening to have his attention arrested by a man who was very furious, and who, while beating his straw, supposed it was William Duke of Cumberland, whom he was punishing for his cruelties in Scotland in 1746. There was nothing peculiarly remarkable this day; but the general contemplation of insanity was very affecting. I accompanied him home, and dined and drank tea with him.

Talking of an acquaintance of ours, distinguished for knowing an uncommon variety of miscellaneous articles both in antiquities and polite literature, he observed, 'You know, sir, he runs about with little weight upon his mind.' And talking of another very ingenious gentleman, who from the warmth of his temper was at variance with many of his acquaintance, and wished to avoid them, he said, 'Sir, he lives the life of an outlaw.'

On Friday, May 12, as he had been so good as to assign me a room in his house, where I might sleep occasionally when I happened to sit with him to a late hour, I took possession of it this night, found everything in excellent order, and was attended by honest Francis with a most I asked Johnson whether I civil assiduity. might go to a consultation with another lawyer upon Sunday, as that appeared to me to be doing work as much in my way, as if an artisan should work on the day appropriated for religious rest. JOHNSON: Why, sir, when you are of consequence enough to oppose the practice of consulting upon Sunday, you should do it; but you may go now, It is not criminal, though it is not what one should do who is anxious for the preservation and increase of piety, to which a peculiar observance of Sunday is a great help. The distinction is clear between what is of moral and what is of ritual obligation.'

On Saturday, May 13, I breakfasted with him by invitation, accompanied by Mr. Andrew Crosbie, a Scotch Advocate, whom he had seen at Edinburgh, and the Hon. Colonel (now General) Edward Stopford, brother to Lord Courtown, who was desirous of being introduced to him. His tea, and rolls, and butter, and whole breakfast apparatus, were all in such

1 My very honourable friend, General Sir George Howard, who served in the Duke of Cumberland's army, has assured me that the cruelties were not im putable to his Royal Highness.-BosWELL.