ume's notion, that all who
are happy are equally happy; a little miss with a new gown at a dancing
school ball, a general at the head of a victorious army, and an orator,
after having made an eloquent speech in a great assembly. JOHNSON. 'Sir,
that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a
philosopher may be equally SATISFIED, but not equally HAPPY. Happiness
consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness. A peasant has
not capacity for having equal happiness with a philosopher.'

Dr. Johnson was very kind this evening, and said to me 'You have now
lived five-and-twenty years, and you have employed them well.' 'Alas,
Sir, (said I,) I fear not. Do I know history? Do I know mathematicks? Do
I know law?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, though you may know no science so well
as to be able to teach it, and no profession so well as to be able to
follow it, your general mass of knowledge of books and men renders you
very capable to make yourself master of any science, or fit yourself for
any profession.' I mentioned that a gay friend had advised me against
being a lawyer, because I should be excelled by plodding block-heads.
JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, in the formulary and statutory part of law, a
plodding block-head may excel; but in the ingenious and rational part of
it a plodding block-head can never excel.'

I talked of the mode adopted by some to rise in the world, by courting
great men, and asked him whether he had ever submitted to it. JOHNSON.
'Why, Sir, I never was near enough to great men, to court them. You may
be prudently attached to great men and yet independent. You are not to
do what you think wrong; and, Sir, you are to calculate, and not pay too
dear for what you get. You must not give a shilling's worth of court for
six-pence worth of good. But if you can get a shilling's worth of good
for six-pence worth of court, you are a fool if you do not pay court.'

I talked to him a great deal of what I had seen in Corsica, and of my
intention to publish an account of it. He encouraged me by saying, 'You
cannot go to the bottom of the subject; but all that you tell us will be
new to us. Give us as many anecdotes as you can.'

Our next meeting at the Mitre was on Saturday the 15th of February, when
I presented to him my old and most intimate friend, the Reverend Mr.
Temple, then of Cambridge. I having mentioned that I had passed some
time with Rousseau in his wild retreat, and having quoted some remark