He bore the journey very well, and seemed to feel himself elevated as he approached Oxford, that magnificent and venerable seat of learning, Orthodoxy, and Toryism.  Frank came in the heavy coach, in readiness to attend him; and we were received with the most polite hospitality at the house of his old friend Dr. Adams, Master of Pembroke College, who had given us a kind invitation.  Before we were set down, I communicated to Johnson, my having engaged to return to London directly, for the reason I have mentioned, but that I would hasten back to him again.  He was pleased that I had made this journey merely to keep him company.  He was easy and placid with Dr. Adams, Mrs. and Miss Adams, and Mrs. Kennicot, widow of the learned Hebraean, who was here on a visit.  He soon dispatched the inquiries which were made about his illness and recovery, by a short and distinct narrative; and then assuming a gay air, repeated from Swift,—­

     ’Nor think on our approaching ills,
     And talk of spectacles and pills.’

I fulfilled my intention by going to London, and returned to Oxford on Wednesday the 9th of June, when I was happy to find myself again in the same agreeable circle at Pembroke College, with the comfortable prospect of making some stay.  Johnson welcomed my return with more than ordinary glee.

Next morning at breakfast, he pointed out a passage in Savage’s Wanderer, saying, ‘These are fine verses.’  ’If (said he,) I had written with hostility of Warburton in my Shakspeare, I should have quoted this couplet:—­

     “Here Learning, blinded first and then beguil’d,
     Looks dark as Ignorance, as Fancy wild.”

You see they’d have fitted him to a T,’ (smiling.) Dr. Adams.  ’But you did not write against Warburton.’  Johnson.  No, Sir, I treated him with great respect both in my Preface and in my Notes.’

After dinner, when one of us talked of there being a great enmity between Whig and Tory;—­Johnson.  ’Why not so much, I think, unless when they come into competition with each other.  There is none when they are only common acquaintance, none when they are of different sexes.  A Tory will marry into a Whig family, and a Whig into a Tory family, without any reluctance.  But indeed, in a matter of much more concern than political tenets, and that is religion, men and women do not concern themselves much about difference of opinion; and ladies set no value on the moral character of men who pay their addresses to them; the greatest profligate will be as well received as the man of the greatest virtue, and this by a very good woman, by a woman who says her prayers three times a day.’  Our ladies endeavoured to defend their sex from this charge; but he roared them down!  ’No, no, a lady will take Jonathan Wild as readily as St. Austin, if he has threepence more; and, what is worse, her parents will give her to him.  Women have a perpetual envy of our vices; they are less vicious than we, not from choice, but because we restrict them; they are the slaves of order and fashion; their virtue is of more consequence to us than our own, so far as concerns this world.’