Swift having been mentioned, Johnson, as usual, treated him with little respect as an authour.  Some of us endeavoured to support the Dean of St. Patrick’s by various arguments.  One in particular praised his Conduct of the Allies.  Johnson.  ’Sir, his Conduct of the Allies is a performance of very little ability.’  ’Surely, Sir, (said Dr. Douglas,) you must allow it has strong facts.’  Johnson.  ’Why yes, Sir; but what is that to the merit of the composition?  In the Sessions-paper of the Old Bailey, there are strong facts.  Housebreaking is a strong fact; robbery is a strong fact; and murder is a mighty strong fact; but is great praise due to the historian of those strong facts?  No, Sir.  Swift has told what he had to tell distinctly enough, but that is all.  He had to count ten, and he has counted it right.’  Then recollecting that Mr. Davies, by acting as an informer, had been the occasion of his talking somewhat too harshly to his friend Dr. Percy, for which, probably, when the first ebullition was over, he felt some compunction, he took an opportunity to give him a hit; so added, with a preparatory laugh, ’Why, Sir, Tom Davies might have written The Conduct of the Allies.’  Poor Tom being thus suddenly dragged into ludicrous notice in presence of the Scottish Doctors, to whom he was ambitious of appearing to advantage, was grievously mortified.  Nor did his punishment rest here; for upon subsequent occasions, whenever he, ‘statesman all over,’ assumed a strutting importance, I used to hail him—­’the Authour of The Conduct of the Allies.’

When I called upon Dr. Johnson next morning, I found him highly satisfied with his colloquial prowess the preceding evening.  ’Well, (said he,) we had good talk.’  Boswell.  ’Yes, Sir; you tossed and gored several persons.’

The late Alexander, Earl of Eglintoune, who loved wit more than wine, and men of genius more than sycophants, had a great admiration of Johnson; but from the remarkable elegance of his own manners, was, perhaps, too delicately sensible of the roughness which sometimes appeared in Johnson’s behaviour.  One evening about this time, when his Lordship did me the honour to sup at my lodgings with Dr. Robertson and several other men of literary distinction, he regretted that Johnson had not been educated with more refinement, and lived more in polished society.  ’No, no, my Lord, (said Signor Baretti,) do with him what you would, he would always have been a bear.’  ’True, (answered the Earl, with a smile,) but he would have been a dancing bear.’

To obviate all the reflections which have gone round the world to Johnson’s prejudice, by applying to him the epithet of a bear, let me impress upon my readers a just and happy saying of my friend Goldsmith, who knew him well:  ’Johnson, to be sure, has a roughness in his manner; but no man alive has a more tender heart.  He has nothing of the bear but his skin.’