faid nothing at the time; but inflammable particles were collecting for a cloud to burst. In a little while Dr. Percy faid fomething more in difparagement of Pennant.-7. (pointedly) "This is the resentment of a narrow mind, because he did not find every thing in Northumberland."-P. (feeling the ftroke) "Sir, you may be as rude as you pleafe."-7. “ Hold, Sir! Don't talk of rudenefs; remember, Sir, you told me (puffing hard with paffion firuggling for a vent) I was fhort-fighted. We have done with civility. We are to be as rude as we please."-P. "Upon my honour, Sir, I did not mean to be uncivil."-7. " I cannot fay fo, Sir; I did mean to be uncivil, thinking you had been uncivil." Dr. Percy rofe, ran up to him, and, taking him by the hand, affured him affectionately that his meaning had been mifunderstood; upon which a reconciliation inftantly took place.-7. " My dear Sir, I am willing you fhall bang Pennant."-P. (refuming the former fubject) "Pennant complains that the helmet is not hung out to invite to the hall of hofpitality. Now I never heard that it was the custom to hang out a helmet.-J.

Hang him up, hang him up."-BOSWELL. (humouring the joke) "Hang out his fkull inftead of a helmet, and you may drink ale out of it in your hall of Odin, as he is your enemy;

that will be truly ancient. There will be Northern Antiquities."-7. "He's a Whig, Sir; a fad dog, (fmiling at his own violent expreffions, merely for political difference of opinion). But he's the best traveller I ever read he obferves more things than any one elfe does."

He gave much praife to his friend Dr. Burney's elegant and entertaining Travels, and told Mr. Seward, that he had them in his eye, when writing his Journey to the Weftern Iflands of Scotland.'

Dr. Dodd's poem entitled, Thoughts in a Prifon, appearing an extraordinary effort by a man who was in Newgate for a capital crime, Mr. Bofwell was defirous to hear Johnson's

opinion of it. To my furprize (fays Mr. B.) he told me he had not read a line of it. I took up the book, and read a paffage to him.JOHNSON.Pretty well, if you are previously difpofed to like them." I read another paffage, with which he was better pleafed. He then took the book into his own hands, and having looked at the prayer at the end of it, he faid, "What evidence is there that this was compofed the night before he fuffered? I do not believe it." He then read aloud where he prays for the King, &c. and obferved, "Sir, do you think that a man the night before he is

to be hanged cares for the fucceffion of a royal family? Though he may have compofed this prayer then. A man who has been canting all his life may cant to the laft; and yet a man who has been refused a pardon after so much titioning would hardly be praying thus fervently for the King."

pe

Mr. Bofwell one day asked, "Was not Dr. John Campbell a very inaccurate man in his narrative, Sir? He once told me, that he drank thirteen bottles of port at a fitting."JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, I do not know that Campbell ever lied with pen and ink; but you could not entirely depend on any thing he told you in converfation, if there was fact mixed with it. However, I loved Campbell: he was a folid orthodox man; he had a reverence for religion. Though defective in practice, he was religious in principle; and he did nothing grofsly wrong that I have heard."

Mr. Bofwell had lent Johnfon, An Account of Scotland, in 1702,' written by a man of various enquiry, an English Chaplain to a regiment ftationed there." It is fad ftuff, Sir (faid the Doctor), miferably written, as books in general then were. There is now an elegance of ftile univerfally diffused. No man now

writes fo ill as Martin's Account of the Hebrides is written. A man could not write fo ill, if he

fhould try.

Set a merchant's clerk now to

write, and he'll do better."

"Thomas à Kempis (he observed) must be a good book, as the world has opened its arms to receive it. It is faid to have been printed, in one language or other, as many times as there have been months fince it firft came out. I always was ftruck with this fentence in it :'Be not angry that you cannot make others as you with them to be, fince you cannot make yourself as you wish to be."

He said, the critics had done too much honour to Sir Richard Blackmore, by writing fo much against him. In his been helped by various wits,

Creation' he had

a line by Phillips and a line by Tickell; fo that by their aid, and that of others, the poem had been made

out.

"Lord Chesterfield's 'Letters to his Son' (he thought) might be made a very pretty book. Take out the immorality, and it should be put into the hands of every young gentleman. An elegant manner and eafinefs of behaviour are acquired gradually and imperceptibly. No man can fay I'll be genteel.' There are ten genteel women for one genteel man, because they are more reftrained. A man without fome degree of restraint is infufferable; but we are all lefs reftrained than women. Were a woman

fitting

fitting in company to put out her legs before her as moft men do, we fhould be tempted to kick them in."

"I read (faid he) 'Sharpe's Letters on Italy' over again when I was at Bath. There is a great deal of matter in them.”

Care

Johnson usually spoke with contempt of Colley Cibber. "It is wonderful' (faid he) that a man who for forty years had lived with the great and the witty fhould have acquired fo ill the talents of converfation: and he had but half to furnish; for one half of what he faid was oaths." He, however, allowed confiderable merit to fome of his comedies, and faid, there was no reafon to believe that the lefs Hufband' was not written by himself.Mr. Davies faid, he was the firft dramatic writer who introduced genteel ladies upon the ftage. Johnson refuted this obfervation by inftancing feveral fuch characters in comedies before his time. DAVIES. (trying to defend himself from a charge of ignorance.) "I mean genteel moral characters."-" I think (faid "I Mr. Hicky), gentility and morality are infeparable."-BOSWELL. "By no means, Sir. The genteeleft characters are often the most immoral. Does not Lord Chesterfield give precepts for uniting wickednefs and the graces? A man indeed is not genteel when he gets drunk;