r. Johnson, concerning the well-known writer
of that celebrated work: but if people will live long enough in this
capricious world, such instances of partiality will shock them less and
less by frequent repetition. Mr. Johnson knew mankind, and wished to
mend them: he therefore, to the piety and pure religion, the untainted
integrity, and scrupulous morals of my earliest and most disinterested
friend, judiciously contrived to join a cautious attention to the
capacity of his hearers, and a prudent resolution not to lessen the
influence of his learning and virtue, by casual freaks of humour and
irregular starts of ill-managed merriment. He did not wish to confound,
but to inform his auditors; and though he did not appear to solicit
benevolence, he always wished to retain authority, and leave his company
impressed with the idea that it was his to teach in this world, and
theirs to learn. What wonder, then, that all should receive with
docility from Johnson those doctrines, which, propagated by Collier, they
drove away from them with shouts! Dr. Johnson was not grave, however,
because he knew not how to be merry. No man loved laughing better, and
his vein of humour was rich and apparently inexhaustible; though Dr.
Goldsmith said once to him, "We should change companions oftener, we
exhaust one another, and shall soon be both of us worn out." Poor
Goldsmith was to him, indeed, like the earthen pot to the iron one in
Fontaine's fables; it had been better for _him_, perhaps, that they had
changed companions oftener; yet no experience of his antagonist's
strength hindered him from continuing the contest. He used to remind me
always of that verse in Berni--

"Il pover uomo che non sen' era accorto,
Andava combattendo--ed era morto."

Mr. Johnson made him a comical answer one day, when seeming to repine at
the success of Beattie's "Essay on Truth"--"Here's such a stir," said he,
"about a fellow that has written one book, and I have written many." "Ah,
Doctor," says his friend, "there go two-and-forty sixpences, you know, to
one guinea."

They had spent an evening with Eaton Graham, too, I remember hearing it
was at some tavern; his heart was open, and he began inviting away; told
what he could do to make his college agreeable, and begged the visit
might not be delayed. Goldsmith thanked him, and proposed setting out
with Mr. Johnson for Buckinghamshire in a fortnight. "Nay, hold, Dr.
_Minor_," says the other, "