He wished to have more books, and, upon inquiring if there were any in the house, was told that a waiter had some, which were brought to him; but I recollect none of them, except Hervey’s Meditations.  He thought slightingly of this admired book.  He treated it with ridicule, and would not allow even the scene of the dying Husband and Father to be pathetick[941].  I am not an impartial judge; for Hervey’s Meditations engaged my affections in my early years.  He read a passage concerning the moon, ludicrously, and shewed how easily he could, in the same style, make reflections on that planet, the very reverse of Hervey’s[942], representing her as treacherous to mankind.  He did this with much humour; but I have not preserved the particulars.  He then indulged a playful fancy, in making a Meditation on a Pudding[943], of which I hastily wrote down, in his presence, the following note; which, though imperfect, may serve to give my readers some idea of it.

MEDITATION ON A PUDDING.

’Let us seriously reflect of what a pudding is composed.  It is composed of flour that once waved in the golden grain, and drank the dews of the morning; of milk pressed from the swelling udder by the gentle hand of the beauteous milk-maid, whose beauty and innocence might have recommended a worse draught; who, while she stroked the udder, indulged no ambitious thoughts of wandering in palaces, formed no plans for the destruction of her fellow-creatures:  milk, which is drawn from the cow, that useful animal, that eats the grass of the field, and supplies us with that which made the greatest part of the food of mankind in the age which the poets have agreed to call golden.  It is made with an egg, that miracle of nature, which the theoretical Burnet[944] has compared to creation.  An egg contains water within its beautiful smooth surface; and an unformed mass, by the incubation of the parent, becomes a regular animal, furnished with bones and sinews, and covered with feathers.  Let us consider; can there be more wanting to complete the Meditation on a Pudding?  If more is wanting, more may be found.  It contains salt, which keeps the sea from putrefaction:  salt, which is made the image of intellectual excellence, contributes to the formation of a pudding.’

In a Magazine I found a saying of Dr. Johnson’s, something to this purpose; that the happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.  I read it to him.  He said, ’I may, perhaps, have said this; for nobody, at times, talks more laxly than I do[945].’  I ventured to suggest to him, that this was dangerous from one of his authority.