through the glass-door in the
room in which we were sitting, advancing towards us,--he announced his
aweful approach to me, somewhat in the manner of an actor in the part
of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's
ghost, 'Look, my Lord, it comes.'"

So, with characteristic accuracy and characteristic imagination, begins
his well-known account of his first meeting with his hero, and the
storms to which he was exposed in its course. But all ended
satisfactorily, for when the great man was gone, Davies reassured the
nervous Boswell by saying: "Don't be uneasy, I can see he likes you
very well." A few days afterwards Boswell called on Johnson at his
Chambers in the Temple, and the great friendship which was the pleasure
and business of his life was definitely begun. Yet it is worth
remembering, if only as an additional proof of Boswell's biographical
genius, that, according to the calculation of Dr. Birkbeck Hill, when
all the weeks and months during which Johnson and Boswell were living
within reach of each {75} other are added together, they amount to
little more than two years. And of course this includes all the days
on which they were both in London, on many, or rather most, of which
they did not meet.

A few months after the first meeting, Boswell went by his father's wish
to Utrecht to study law. But before that the friendship was got on to
a firm footing, and Boswell had had the pride and pleasure of hearing
Johnson say, "There are few people whom I take so much to, as you." A
still stronger proof of Johnson's feeling was that he insisted on going
with Boswell to Harwich to see him out of England. This was the
occasion on which he scarified the good Protestants who were with them
in the coach by defending the Inquisition, and invited one of the
ladies who said she never allowed her children to be idle to take his
own education in hand; "'for I have been an idle fellow all my life.'
'I am sure, sir,' said she, 'you have not been idle.' 'Nay, madam, it
is very true, and that gentleman there,' pointing to me, 'has been
idle. He was idle at Edinburgh. His father sent him to Glasgow where
he continued to be idle. He then came to London where he has been very
idle; and now he is going to Utrecht where he will be as idle as ever.'
I asked him privately how he could expose me {76} so. 'Pooh, Pooh!'
said he, 'they know nothing about you and will think of it no more.'"
When he was not