Mr. Berrenger visited him to-day, and was very pleasing.  We talked of an evening society for conversation at a house in town, of which we were all members, but of which Johnson said, ’It will never do, Sir.  There is nothing served about there, neither tea, nor coffee, nor lemonade, nor any thing whatever; and depend upon it, Sir, a man does not love to go to a place from whence he comes out exactly as he went in.’  I endeavoured, for argument’s sake, to maintain that men of learning and talents might have very good intellectual society, without the aid of any little gratifications of the senses.  Berrenger joined with Johnson, and said, that without these any meeting would be dull and insipid.  He would therefore have all the slight refreshments; nay, it would not be amiss to have some cold meat, and a bottle of wine upon a side-board.  ’Sir, (said Johnson to me, with an air of triumph,) Mr. Berrenger knows the world.  Every body loves to have good things furnished to them without any trouble.  I told Mrs. Thrale once, that as she did not choose to have card tables, she should have a profusion of the best sweetmeats, and she would be sure to have company enough come to her.’

On Sunday, April 15, being Easter-day, after solemn worship in St. Paul’s church, I found him alone; Dr. Scott of the Commons came in.

We talked of the difference between the mode of education at Oxford, and that in those Colleges where instruction is chiefly conveyed by lectures.  Johnson.  ’Lectures were once useful; but now, when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary.  If your attention fails, and you miss a part of a lecture, it is lost; you cannot go back as you do upon a book.’  Dr. Scott agreed with him.  ’But yet (said I), Dr. Scott, you yourself gave lectures at Oxford.’  He smiled.  ‘You laughed (then said I,) at those who came to you.’

Dr. Scott left us, and soon afterwards we went to dinner.  Our company consisted of Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Desmoulins, Mr. Levett, Mr. Allen, the printer, and Mrs. Hall, sister of the Reverend Mr. John Wesley, and resembling him, as I thought, both in figure and manner.  Johnson produced now, for the first time, some handsome silver salvers, which he told me he had bought fourteen years ago; so it was a great day.  I was not a little amused by observing Allen perpetually struggling to talk in the manner of Johnson, like the little frog in the fable blowing himself up to resemble the stately ox.

He mentioned a thing as not unfrequent, of which I had never heard before,—­being called, that is, hearing one’s name pronounced by the voice of a known person at a great distance, far beyond the possibility of being reached by any sound uttered by human organs.  ’An acquaintance, on whose veracity I can depend, told me, that walking home one evening to Kilmarnock, he heard himself called from a wood, by the voice of a brother who had gone to America; and the next packet brought accounts of that