Johnson had called twice on the Bishop of Killaloe before his Lordship set out for Ireland, having missed him the first time.  He said, ’It would have hung heavy on my heart if I had not seen him.  No man ever paid more attention to another than he has done to me; and I have neglected him, not wilfully, but from being otherwise occupied.  Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness.  He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.’

I asked him if he was not dissatisfied with having so small a share of wealth, and none of those distinctions in the state which are the objects of ambition.  He had only a pension of three hundred a year.  Why was he not in such circumstances as to keep his coach?  Why had he not some considerable office?  Johnson.  ’Sir, I have never complained of the world; nor do I think that I have reason to complain.  It is rather to be wondered at that I have so much.  My pension is more out of the usual course of things than any instance that I have known.  Here, Sir, was a man avowedly no friend to Government at the time, who got a pension without asking for it.  I never courted the great; they sent for me; but I think they now give me up.  They are satisfied; they have seen enough of me.’

Strange, however, it is, to consider how few of the great sought his society; so that if one were disposed to take occasion for satire on that account, very conspicuous objects present themselves.  His noble friend, Lord Elibank, well observed, that if a great man procured an interview with Johnson, and did not wish to see him more, it shewed a mere idle curiosity, and a wretched want of relish for extraordinary powers of mind.  Mrs. Thrale justly and wittily accounted for such conduct by saying, that Johnson’s conversation was by much too strong for a person accustomed to obsequiousness and flattery; it was mustard in a young child’s mouth!

On Saturday, June 2, I set out for Scotland, and had promised to pay a visit in my way, as I sometimes did, at Southill, in Bedfordshire, at the hospitable mansion of ’Squire Dilly, the elder brother of my worthy friends, the booksellers, in the Poultry.  Dr. Johnson agreed to be of the party this year, with Mr. Charles Dilly and me, and to go and see Lord Bute’s seat at Luton Hoe.  He talked little to us in the carriage, being chiefly occupied in reading Dr. Watson’s second volume of Chemical Essays, which he liked very well, and his own Prince of Abyssinia, on which he seemed to be intensely fixed; having told us, that he had not looked at it since it was first published.  I happened to take it out of my pocket this day, and he seized upon it with avidity.