udicrous a manner, as to make
us all wonder how any one could have been pleased with such fantastical
stuff. Mrs. Thrale stood to her gun with great courage, in defence of
amorous ditties, which Johnson despised, till he at last silenced her
by saying, 'My dear Lady, talk no more of this. Nonsense can be defended
but by nonsense.'

Mrs. Thrale then praised Garrick's talent for light gay poetry; and, as
a specimen, repeated his song in Florizel and Perdita, and dwelt with
peculiar pleasure on this line:

'I'd smile with the simple, and feed with the poor.'

JOHNSON. 'Nay, my dear Lady, this will never do. Poor David! Smile with
the simple;--What folly is that? And who would feed with the poor that
can help it? No, no; let me smile with the wise, and feed with the
rich.' I repeated this sally to Garrick, and wondered to find his
sensibility as a writer not a little irritated by it. To sooth him, I
observed, that Johnson spared none of us; and I quoted the passage in
Horace, in which he compares one who attacks his friends for the sake of
a laugh, to a pushing ox, that is marked by a bunch of hay put upon his
horns: 'foenum habet in cornu.' 'Ay, (said Garrick vehemently,) he has a
whole MOW of it.'

He would not allow much merit to Whitefield's oratory. 'His popularity,
Sir, (said be,) is chiefly owing to the peculiarity of his manner. He
would be followed by crowds were he to wear a night-cap in the pulpit,
or were he to preach from a tree.'

On the evening of October 10, I presented Dr. Johnson to General Paoli.
I had greatly wished that two men, for whom I had the highest esteem,
should meet. They met with a manly ease, mutually conscious of their
own abilities, and of the abilities of each other. The General spoke
Italian, and Dr. Johnson English, and understood one another very well,
with a little aid of interpretation from me, in which I compared myself
to an isthmus which joins two great continents. Upon Johnson's approach,
the General said, 'From what I have read of your works, Sir, and from
what Mr. Boswell has told me of you, I have long held you in great
veneration.' The General talked of languages being formed on the
particular notions and manners of a people, without knowing which, we
cannot know the language. We may know the direct signification of single
words; but by these no beauty of expression, no sally of genius, no wit
is conveyed to the mind. All this must be by allusion to other ideas.
'Sir