ven
Scotch isles; he re-embarked with THREE AND SIX-PENCE.' Here again
Johnson and Wilkes joined in extravagant sportive raillery upon the
supposed poverty of Scotland, which Dr. Beattie and I did not think it
worth our while to dispute.

The subject of quotation being introduced, Mr. Wilkes censured it as
pedantry. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, it is a good thing; there is a community of
mind in it. Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over
the world.'

He gave us an entertaining account of Bet Flint, a woman of the town,
who, with some eccentrick talents and much effrontery, forced herself
upon his acquaintance. 'Bet (said he,) wrote her own Life in verse,
which she brought to me, wishing that I would furnish her with a Preface
to it, (laughing.) I used to say of her that she was generally slut
and drunkard; occasionally, whore and thief. She had, however, genteel
lodgings, a spinnet on which she played, and a boy that walked before
her chair. Poor Bet was taken up on a charge of stealing a counterpane,
and tried at the Old Bailey. Chief Justice ------, who loved a wench,
summed up favourably, and she was acquitted. After which Bet said, with
a gay and satisfied air, "Now that the counterpane is MY OWN, I shall
make a petticoat of it."'

Talking of oratory, Mr. Wilkes described it as accompanied with all the
charms of poetical expression. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; oratory is the power
of beating down your adversary's arguments, and putting better in their
place.' WILKES. 'But this does not move the passions.' JOHNSON. 'He
must be a weak man, who is to be so moved.' WILKES. (naming a celebrated
orator,) 'Amidst all the brilliancy of ------'s imagination, and the
exuberance of his wit, there is a strange want of TASTE. It was observed
of Apelles's Venus, that her flesh seemed as if she had been nourished
by roses: his oratory would sometimes make one suspect that he eats
potatoes and drinks whisky.'

Mr. Wilkes said to me, loud enough for Dr. Johnson to hear, 'Dr. Johnson
should make me a present of his Lives of the Poets, as I am a poor
patriot, who cannot afford to buy them.' Johnson seemed to take no
notice of this hint; but in a little while, he called to Mr. Dilly,
'Pray, Sir, be so good as to send a set of my Lives to Mr. Wilkes, with
my compliments.' This was accordingly done; and Mr. Wilkes paid Dr.
Johnson a visit, was courteously received, and sat with him a long time.

The company gradually dropped away.