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attended the solemn service at St. Paul’s, I dined with Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Williams. I maintained that Horace was wrong in placing happiness in Nil admirari,480 for that I thought admiration one of the most agreeable of all our feelings; and I regretted that I had lost much of my disposition to admire, which people generally do as they advance in life. JOHNSON. ‘sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration – judgement, to estimate things at their true value.’ I still insisted that admiration was more pleasing than judgement, as love is more pleasing than friendship. The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne. JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir; admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgement and friendship like being enlivened. Waller has hit upon the same thought with you:b but I don’t believe you have borrowed from Waller. I wish you would enable yourself to borrow more.’

He then took occasion to enlarge on the advantages of reading, and combated the idle superficial notion, that knowledge enough may be acquired in conversation. ‘The foundation (said he,) must be laid by reading. General principles must be had from books, which, however, must be brought to the test of real life. In conversation you never get a system. What is said upon a subject is to be gathered from a hundred people. The parts of a truth, which a man gets thus, are at such a distance from each other that he never attains to a full view.’

‘To BENNET LANGTON, ESQ.

‘DEAR SIR, – I have enquired more minutely about the medicine for the rheumatism, which I am sorry to hear that you still want. The receipt is this:

‘Take equal quantities of flour of sulphur, and flour of mustard-seed, make them an electuary482 with honey or treacle; and take a bolus483 as big as a nutmeg several times a day, as you can bear it: drinking after it a quarter of a pint of the infusion of the root of Lovage.

‘Lovage, in Ray’s Nomenclature, is Levisticum: perhaps the Botanists may know the Latin name.

‘Of this medicine I pretend not to judge. There is all the appearance of its efficacy, which a single instance can afford: the patient was very old, the pain very violent, and the relief, I think, speedy and lasting.

‘My opinion of alterative medicine is not high, but quid tentasse nocebit?484 if it does harm, or does no good, it may be omitted; but that it may do good, you have, I hope, reason to think is desired by, Sir, your most affectionate, humble servant,

‘April 17, 1775.’ ’sAM. JOHNSON.’

On Tuesday, April 18, he and I were engaged to go with Sir Joshua Reynolds to dine with Mr. Cambridge, at his beautiful villa on the banks of the Thames, near Twickenham. Dr. Johnson’s tardiness was such, that Sir Joshua, who had an appointment at Richmond, early in the day, was obliged to go by himself on horseback, leaving his coach to Johnson and me. Johnson was in such good spirits, that every thing seemed to please him as we drove along.

Our conversation turned on a variety of subjects. He thought portrait-painting an improper employment for a woman. ‘Publick practice of any art, (he observed,) and staring in men’s faces, is very indelicate in a female.’ I happened to start a question of propriety, whether, when a man knows that some of his intimate friends are invited to the house of another friend, with whom they are all equally intimate, he may join them without an invitation. JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir; he is not to go when he is not invited. They may be invited on purpose to abuse him’ (smiling).

As a curious instance how little a man knows, or wishes to know, his own character in the world, or, rather, as a convincing proof that Johnson’s roughness was only external, and did not proceed from his heart, I insert the following dialogue. JOHNSON. ‘It is wonderful, Sir, how rare a quality good humour is in life. We meet with very few good humoured men.’ I mentioned four of our friends,485 none of whom he would allow to be good humoured. One was acid, another was muddy,