NSON. 'Depend upon
it, Sir, every man will have as fine a thing as he can get; as a large
diamond for his ring.' BOSWELL. 'Pardon me, Sir: a man of a narrow mind
will not think of it, a slight trinket will satisfy him:

"Nec sufferre queat majoris pondera gemmae."'

I told him I should send him some Essays which I had written, which
I hoped he would be so good as to read, and pick out the good ones.
JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, send me only the good ones; don't make ME pick
them.'

As a small proof of his kindliness and delicacy of feeling, the
following circumstance may be mentioned: One evening when we were in the
street together, and I told him I was going to sup at Mr. Beauclerk's,
he said, 'I'll go with you.' After having walked part of the way,
seeming to recollect something, he suddenly stopped and said, 'I cannot
go,--but I do not love Beauclerk the less.'

On the frame of his portrait, Mr. Beauclerk had inscribed,--

'-------- Ingenium ingens
Inculto latet hoc sub corpore.'

After Mr. Beauclerk's death, when it became Mr. Langton's property, he
made the inscription be defaced. Johnson said complacently, 'It was kind
in you to take it off;' and then after a short pause, added, 'and not
unkind in him to put it on.'

He said, 'How few of his friends' houses would a man choose to be at
when he is sick.' He mentioned one or two. I recollect only Thrale's.

He observed, 'There is a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an
old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when
leaving a company, does not recollect where he laid his hat, it is
nothing; but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, people
will shrug up their shoulders, and say, "His memory is going."'

Sir Joshua Reynolds communicated to me the following particulars:--

Johnson thought the poems published as translations from Ossian had so
little merit, that he said, 'Sir, a man might write such stuff for ever,
if he would ABANDON his mind to it.'

He said, 'A man should pass a part of his time with THE LAUGHERS,
by which means any thing ridiculous or particular about him might be
presented to his view, and corrected.' I observed, he must have been a
bold laugher who would have ventured to tell Dr. Johnson of any of his
particularities.*

* I am happy, however, to mention a pleasing instance of his
enduring with great gentleness to hear one of his most
striking particularities pointed