On Friday, April 6, he carried me to dine at a club, which, at his desire, had been lately formed at the Queen’s Arms, in St. Paul’s Church-yard.  He told Mr. Hoole, that he wished to have a City Club, and asked him to collect one; but, said he, ’Don’t let them be patriots[286].’  The company were to-day very sensible, well-behaved men.  I have preserved only two particulars of his conversation.  He said he was glad Lord George Gordon had escaped[287], rather than that a precedent should be established for hanging a man for constructive treason; which, in consistency with his true, manly, constitutional Toryism, he considered would be a dangerous engine of arbitrary power.  And upon its being mentioned that an opulent and very indolent Scotch nobleman, who totally resigned the management of his affairs to a man of knowledge and abilities, had claimed some merit by saying, ’The next best thing to managing a man’s own affairs well is being sensible of incapacity, and not attempting it, but having full confidence in one who can do it:’  JOHNSON.  ’Nay, Sir, this is paltry.  There is a middle course.  Let a man give application; and depend upon it he will soon get above a despicable state of helplessness, and attain the power of acting for himself.’

On Saturday, April 7, I dined with him at Mr. Hoole’s with Governour Bouchier and Captain Orme, both of whom had been long in the East-Indies; and being men of good sense and observation, were very entertaining.  Johnson defended the oriental regulation of different casts of men, which was objected to as totally destructive of the hopes of rising in society by personal merit.  He shewed that there was a principle in it sufficiently plausible by analogy.  ’We see (said he) in metals that there are different species; and so likewise in animals, though one species may not differ very widely from another, as in the species of dogs,—­the cur, the spaniel, the mastiff.  The Bramins are the mastiffs of mankind.’

On Thursday, April 12, I dined with him at a Bishop’s, where were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Berrenger, and some more company.  He had dined the day before at another Bishop’s.  I have unfortunately recorded none of his conversation at the Bishop’s where we dined together[288]:  but I have preserved his ingenious defence of his dining twice abroad in Passion-week[289]; a laxity, in which I am convinced he would not have indulged himself at the time when he wrote his solemn paper in The Rambler[290], upon that aweful season.  It appeared to me, that by being much more in company, and enjoying more luxurious living, he had contracted a keener relish of pleasure, and was consequently less rigorous in his religious rites.  This he would not acknowledge; but he reasoned with admirable sophistry, as follows:  ’Why, Sir, a Bishop’s calling company together in this week is, to use the vulgar phrase, not the thing.  But you must consider laxity