ntioned this
to Johnson, he said, 'I drink it now sometimes, but not socially.' The
first evening that I was with him at Thrale's, I observed he poured
a large quantity of it into a glass, and swallowed it greedily. Every
thing about his character and manners was forcible and violent; there
never was any moderation; many a day did he fast, many a year did he
refrain from wine; but when he did eat, it was voraciously; when he
did drink wine, it was copiously. He could practise abstinence, but not
temperance.

Mrs. Thrale and I had a dispute, whether Shakspeare or Milton had drawn
the most admirable picture of a man.* I was for Shakspeare; Mrs. Thrale
for Milton; and after a fair hearing, Johnson decided for my opinion.

* The passages considered, according to Boswell's note, were
the portrait of Hamlet's father (Ham. 3. 4. 55-62), and the
portrait of Adam (P. L. 4. 300-303).--ED.

I told him of one of Mr. Burke's playful sallies upon Dean Marlay:
'I don't like the Deanery of Ferns, it sounds so like a BARREN
title.'--'Dr. HEATH should have it;' said I. Johnson laughed, and
condescending to trifle in the same mode of conceit, suggested Dr. MOSS.

He said, 'Mrs. Montagu has dropt me. Now, Sir, there are people whom one
should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.' He
certainly was vain of the society of ladies, and could make himself very
agreeable to them, when he chose it; Sir Joshua Reynolds agreed with
me that he could. Mr. Gibbon, with his usual sneer, controverted it,
perhaps in resentment of Johnson's having talked with some disgust of
his ugliness, which one would think a PHILOSOPHER would not mind.
Dean Marlay wittily observed, 'A lady may be vain, when she can turn a
wolf-dog into a lap-dog.'

His notion of the duty of a member of Parliament, sitting upon an
election-committee, was very high; and when he was told of a gentleman
upon one of those committees, who read the newspapers part of the time,
and slept the rest, while the merits of a vote were examined by the
counsel; and as an excuse, when challenged by the chairman for
such behaviour, bluntly answered, 'I had made up my mind upon that
case.'--Johnson, with an indignant contempt, said, 'If he was such a
rogue as to make up his mind upon a case without hearing it, he should
not have been such a fool as to tell it.' 'I think (said Mr. Dudley
Long, now North,) the Doctor has pretty plainly made him out to be both
ro