We this day dined at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, with General Paoli, Lord Eliot, (formerly Mr. Eliot, of Port Eliot,) Dr. Beattie, and some other company.  Talking of Lord Chesterfield;—­Johnson.  ’His manner was exquisitely elegant, and he had more knowledge than I expected.’  Boswell.  ’Did you find, Sir, his conversation to be of a superiour style?’ Johnson.  ’Sir, in the conversation which I had with him I had the best right to superiority, for it was upon philology and literature.’  Lord Eliot, who had travelled at the same time with Mr. Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield’s natural son, justly observed, that it was strange that a man who shewed he had so much affection for his son as Lord Chesterfield did, by writing so many long and anxious letters to him, almost all of them when he was Secretary of State, which certainly was a proof of great goodness of disposition, should endeavour to make his son a rascal.  His Lordship told us, that Foote had intended to bring on the stage a father who had thus tutored his son, and to shew the son an honest man to every one else, but practising his father’s maxims upon him, and cheating him.  Johnson.  ’I am much pleased with this design; but I think there was no occasion to make the son honest at all.  No; he should be a consummate rogue:  the contrast between honesty and knavery would be the stronger.  It should be contrived so that the father should be the only sufferer by the son’s villainy, and thus there would be poetical justice.’

A young gentleman present took up the argument against him, and maintained that no man ever thinks of the nose of the mind, not adverting that though that figurative sense seems strange to us, as very unusual, it is truly not more forced than Hamlet’s ’In my MIND’S eye, Horatio.’  He persisted much too long, and appeared to Johnson as putting himself forward as his antagonist with too much presumption; upon which he called to him in a loud tone, ’What is it you are contending for, if you be contending?’ And afterwards imagining that the gentleman retorted upon him with a kind of smart drollery, he said, ’Mr. ***** it does not become you to talk so to me.  Besides, ridicule is not your talent; you have there neither intuition nor sagacity.’  The gentleman protested that he had intended no improper freedom, but had the greatest respect for Dr. Johnson.  After a short pause, during which we were somewhat uneasy,—­Johnson.  ’Give me your hand, Sir.  You were too tedious, and I was too short.’  Mr. *****.  ’Sir, I am honoured by your attention in any way.’  Johnson.  ’Come, Sir, let’s have no more of it.  We offended one another by our contention; let us not offend the company by our compliments.’

He now said, ’He wished much to go to Italy, and that he dreaded passing the winter in England.’  I said nothing; but enjoyed a secret satisfaction in thinking that I had taken the most effectual measures to make such a scheme practicable.