to London,
principally to see Dr. Johnson. He seemed angry at this observation.
DAVIES. 'Why, you know, Sir, there came a man from Spain to see Livy;
and Corelli came to England to see Purcell, and when he heard he was
dead, went directly back again to Italy.' JOHNSON. 'I should not have
wished to be dead to disappoint Campbell, had he been so foolish as you
represent him; but I should have wished to have been a hundred miles
off.' This was apparently perverse; and I do believe it was not his real
way of thinking: he could not but like a man who came so far to see
him. He laughed with some complacency, when I told him Campbell's odd
expression to me concerning him: 'That having seen such a man, was a
thing to talk of a century hence,'--as if he could live so long.

We got into an argument whether the Judges who went to India might with
propriety engage in trade. Johnson warmly maintained that they might.
'For why (he urged,) should not Judges get riches, as well as those who
deserve them less?' I said, they should have sufficient salaries,
and have nothing to take off their attention from the affairs of the
publick. JOHNSON. 'No Judge, Sir, can give his whole attention to his
office; and it is very proper that he should employ what time he has to
himself, to his own advantage, in the most profitable manner.' 'Then,
Sir, (said Davies, who enlivened the dispute by making it somewhat
dramatick,) he may become an insurer; and when he is going to the bench,
he may be stopped,--"Your Lordship cannot go yet: here is a bunch of
invoices: several ships are about to sail."' JOHNSON. Sir, you may as
well say a Judge should not have a house; for they may come and tell
him, "Your Lordship's house is on fire;" and so, instead of minding the
business of his Court, he is to be occupied in getting the engine with
the greatest speed. There is no end of this. Every Judge who has land,
trades to a certain extent in corn or in cattle; and in the land itself,
undoubtedly. His steward acts for him, and so do clerks for a great
merchant. A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs.
A Judge may play a little at cards for his amusement; but he is not to
play at marbles, or at chuck-farthing in the Piazza. No, Sir; there is
no profession to which a man gives a very great proportion of his time.
It is wonderful, when a calculation is made, how little the mind is
actually employed in the discharge of any profession. No man would be