n's body might be feasted, but his mind was starved, and his faculties
apt to degenerate, from want of exercise and competition. No place, (he
said,) cured a man's vanity or arrogance so well as London; for as no
man was either great or good per se, but as compared with others not so
good or great, he was sure to find in the metropolis many his equals,
and some his superiours. He observed, that a man in London was in less
danger of falling in love indiscreetly, than any where else; for there
the difficulty of deciding between the conflicting pretensions of a vast
variety of objects, kept him safe. He told me, that he had frequently
been offered country preferment, if he would consent to take orders; but
he could not leave the improved society of the capital, or consent to
exchange the exhilarating joys and splendid decorations of publick life,
for the obscurity, insipidity, and uniformity of remote situations.

'Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, he said, was the only book that ever
took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.

'When exasperated by contradiction, he was apt to treat his opponents
with too much acrimony: as, "Sir, you don't see your way through that
question:"--"Sir, you talk the language of ignorance." On my observing
to him that a certain gentleman had remained silent the whole evening,
in the midst of a very brilliant and learned society, "Sir, (said he,)
the conversation overflowed, and drowned him."

'He observed, that the established clergy in general did not preach
plain enough; and that polished periods and glittering sentences flew
over the heads of the common people, without any impression upon
their hearts. Something might be necessary, he observed, to excite the
affections of the common people, who were sunk in languor and lethargy,
and therefore he supposed that the new concomitants of methodism might
probably produce so desirable an effect. The mind, like the body, he
observed, delighted in change and novelty, and even in religion itself,
courted new appearances and modifications. Whatever might be thought of
some methodist teachers, he said, he could scarcely doubt the sincerity
of that man, who travelled nine hundred miles in a month, and preached
twelve times a week; for no adequate reward, merely temporal, could be
given for such indefatigable labour.

'In a Latin conversation with the Pere Boscovitch, at the house of Mrs.
Cholmondeley, I heard him maintain the superiorit