It always appeared to me that he estimated the compositions of Richardson too highly, and that he had an unreasonable prejudice against Fielding.  In comparing those two writers, he used this expression:  ’that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate.’

’I have not been troubled for a long time with authours desiring my opinion of their works.  I used once to be sadly plagued with a man who wrote verses, but who literally had no other notion of a verse, but that it consisted of ten syllables.  Lay your knife and your fork, across your plate, was to him a verse: 

Lay your knife and your fork, across your plate.

As he wrote a great number of verses, he sometimes by chance made good ones, though he did not know it.’

Johnson expatiated on the advantages of Oxford for learning.  ’There is here, Sir, (said he,) such a progressive emulation.  The students are anxious to appear well to their tutors; the tutors are anxious to have their pupils appear well in the college; the colleges are anxious to have their students appear well in the University; and there are excellent rules of discipline in every college.  That the rules are sometimes ill observed, may be true; but is nothing against the system.  The members of an University may, for a season, be unmindful of their duty.  I am arguing for the excellency of the institution.’

He said he had lately been a long while at Lichfield, but had grown very weary before he left it.  Boswell.  ’I wonder at that, Sir; it is your native place.’  Johnson.  ‘Why, so is Scotland your native place.’

His prejudice against Scotland appeared remarkably strong at this time.  When I talked of our advancement in literature, ’Sir, (said he,) you have learnt a little from us, and you think yourselves very great men.  Hume would never have written History, had not Voltaire written it before him.  He is an echo of Voltaire.’  Boswell.  ’But, Sir, we have Lord Kames.’  Johnson.  ’You have Lord Kames.  Keep him; ha, ha, ha!  We don’t envy you him.  Do you ever see Dr. Robertson?’ Boswell.  ‘Yes, Sir.’  Johnson.  ‘Does the dog talk of me?’ Boswell.  ’Indeed, Sir, he does, and loves you.’  Thinking that I now had him in a corner, and being solicitous for the literary fame of my country, I pressed him for his opinion on the merit of Dr. Robertson’s History of Scotland.  But, to my surprize, he escaped.—­’Sir, I love Robertson, and I won’t talk of his book.’