Mrs. Thrale and I had a dispute, whether Shakspeare or Milton had drawn the most admirable picture of a man[241].  I was for Shakspeare; Mrs. Thrale for Milton; and after a fair hearing, Johnson decided for my opinion.

I told him of one of Mr. Burke’s playful sallies upon Dean Marlay[242]:  ’I don’t like the Deanery of Ferns, it sounds so like a barren title.’—­’Dr. Heath should have it;’ said I. Johnson laughed, and condescending to trifle in the same mode of conceit, suggested Dr. Moss[243].

He said, ’Mrs. Montagu has dropt me.  Now, Sir, there are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by[244].’  He certainly was vain of the society of ladies, and could make himself very agreeable to them, when he chose it; Sir Joshua Reynolds agreed with me that he could.  Mr. Gibbon, with his usual sneer, controverted it, perhaps in resentment of Johnson’s having talked with some disgust of his ugliness[245], which one would think a philosopher would not mind.  Dean Marlay wittily observed, ’A lady may be vain, when she can turn a wolf-dog into a lap-dog.’

The election for Ayrshire, my own county, was this spring tried upon a petition, before a Committee of the House of Commons.  I was one of the Counsel for the sitting member, and took the liberty of previously stating different points to Johnson, who never failed to see them clearly, and to supply me with some good hints.  He dictated to me the following note upon the registration of deeds:—­

’All laws are made for the convenience of the community:  what is legally done, should be legally recorded, that the state of things may be known, and that wherever evidence is requisite, evidence may be had.  For this reason, the obligation to frame and establish a legal register is enforced by a legal penalty, which penalty is the want of that perfection and plentitude of right which a register would give.  Thence it follows, that this is not an objection merely legal:  for the reason on which the law stands being equitable, makes it an equitable objection.’

’This (said he) you must enlarge on, when speaking to the Committee.  You must not argue there as if you were arguing in the schools[246]; close reasoning will not fix their attention; you must say the same thing over and over again, in different words.  If you say it but once, they miss it in a moment of inattention.  It is unjust, Sir, to censure lawyers for multiplying words when they argue; it is often necessary for them to multiply words[247].’  His notion of the duty of a member of Parliament, sitting upon an election-committee[248], was very high; and when he was told of a gentleman upon one of those committees, who read the newspapers part of the time, and slept the rest, while the merits of a vote were examined by the counsel; and as an excuse, when challenged by the chairman for such behaviour, bluntly answered, ’I had made up my mind upon that case;’—­Johnson, with an indignant contempt, said, ’If he was such a rogue as to make up his mind upon a case without hearing it, he should not have been such a fool as to tell it.’  ’I think (said Mr. Dudley Long[249], now North) the Doctor has pretty plainly made him out to be both rogue and fool.’