common on such occasions, prescribed various remedies to
him. JOHNSON. (fretted by pain,) 'Pr'ythee don't tease me. Stay till I
am well, and then you shall tell me how to cure myself.' He grew better,
and talked with a noble enthusiasm of keeping up the representation of
respectable families. His zeal on this subject was a circumstance in his
character exceedingly remarkable, when it is considered that he himself
had no pretensions to blood. I heard him once say, 'I have great merit
in being zealous for subordination and the honours of birth; for I
can hardly tell who was my grandfather.' He maintained the dignity and
propriety of male succession, in opposition to the opinion of one of
our friends, who had that day employed Mr. Chambers to draw his will,
devising his estate to his three sisters, in preference to a remote
heir male. Johnson called them 'three DOWDIES,' and said, with as high
a spirit as the boldest Baron in the most perfect days of the feudal
system, 'An ancient estate should always go to males. It is mighty
foolish to let a stranger have it because he marries your daughter, and
takes your name. As for an estate newly acquired by trade, you may give
it, if you will, to the dog Towser, and let him keep his OWN name.'

I have known him at times exceedingly diverted at what seemed to others
a very small sport. He now laughed immoderately, without any reason
that we could perceive, at our friend's making his will; called him the
TESTATOR, and added, 'I dare say, he thinks he has done a mighty thing.
He won't stay till he gets home to his seat in the country, to produce
this wonderful deed: he'll call up the landlord of the first inn on the
road; and, after a suitable preface upon mortality and the uncertainty
of life, will tell him that he should not delay making his will; and
here, Sir, will he say, is my will, which I have just made, with the
assistance of one of the ablest lawyers in the kingdom; and he will read
it to him (laughing all the time). He believes he has made this will;
but he did not make it: you, Chambers, made it for him. I trust you
have had more conscience than to make him say, "being of sound
understanding;" ha, ha, ha! I hope he has left me a legacy. I'd have his
will turned into verse, like a ballad.'

Mr. Chambers did not by any means relish this jocularity upon a matter
of which pars magna fuit, and seemed impatient till he got rid of us.
Johnson could not stop his merriment, but co