the enthusiast,) I know it.  But (in a lower tone,) it was to pay a compliment to the Duchess of Devonshire, with which her Grace was pleased.  She is walking across Coxheath, in the military uniform, and I suppose her to be the Genius of Britain.’  Johnson.  ’Sir, you are giving a reason for it; but that will not make it right.  You may have a reason why two and two should make five; but they will still make but four.’

Although I was several times with him in the course of the following days, such it seems were my occupations, or such my negligence, that I have preserved no memorial of his conversation till Friday, March 26, when I visited him.  He said he expected to be attacked on account of his Lives of the Poets.  ’However (said he,) I would rather be attacked than unnoticed.  For the worst thing you can do to an authour is to be silent as to his works.  An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse; an assault may be unsuccessful; you may have more men killed than you kill; but if you starve the town, you are sure of victory.’

Talking of a friend of ours associating with persons of very discordant principles and characters; I said he was a very universal man, quite a man of the world.  Johnson.  ’Yes, Sir; but one may be so much a man of the world as to be nothing in the world.  I remember a passage in Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to expunge:  “I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing."’ Boswell.  ‘That was a fine passage.’  Johnson.  ’Yes, Sir:  there was another fine passage too, which be struck out:  “When I was a young man, being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions.  But I soon gave this over; for, I found that generally what was new was false."’ I said I did not like to sit with people of whom I had not a good opinion.  Johnson.  ’But you must not indulge your delicacy too much; or you will be a tete-a-tete man all your life.’

During my stay in London this spring, I find I was unaccountably negligent in preserving Johnson’s sayings, more so than at any time when I was happy enough to have an opportunity of hearing his wisdom and wit.  There is no help for it now.  I must content myself with presenting such scraps as I have.  But I am nevertheless ashamed and vexed to think how much has been lost.  It is not that there was a bad crop this year; but that I was not sufficiently careful in gathering it in.  I, therefore, in some instances can only exhibit a few detached fragments.

Talking of the wonderful concealment of the authour of the celebrated letters signed Junius; he said, ’I should have believed Burke to be Junius, because I know no man but Burke who is capable of writing these letters; but Burke spontaneously denied it to me.  The case would have been different had I asked him if he was the authour; a man so questioned, as to an anonymous publication, may think he has a right to deny it.’