a Judge, upon the condition of being totally a Judge. The best employed
lawyer has his mind at work but for a small proportion of his time; a
great deal of his occupation is merely mechanical. I once wrote for a
magazine: I made a calculation, that if I should write but a page a day,
at the same rate, I should, in ten years, write nine volumes in folio,
of an ordinary size and print.' BOSWELL. 'Such as Carte's History?'
JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir. When a man writes from his own mind, he writes very
rapidly. The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in
order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.'

We spoke of Rolt, to whose Dictionary of Commerce Dr. Johnson wrote the
Preface. JOHNSON. 'Old Gardner the bookseller employed Rolt and Smart
to write a monthly miscellany, called The Universal Visitor. There was a
formal written contract, which Allen the printer saw. Gardner thought as
you do of the Judge. They were bound to write nothing else; they were to
have, I think, a third of the profits of this sixpenny pamphlet; and the
contract was for ninety-nine years. I wish I had thought of giving this
to Thurlow, in the cause about Literary Property. What an excellent
instance would it have been of the oppression of booksellers towards
poor authours!' (smiling.) Davies, zealous for the honour of THE TRADE,
said, Gardner was not properly a bookseller. JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir; he
certainly was a bookseller. He had served his time regularly, was a
member of the Stationers' company, kept a shop in the face of mankind,
purchased copyright, and was a bibliopole, Sir, in every sense. I wrote
for some months in The Universal Visitor, for poor Smart, while he was
mad, not then knowing the terms on which he was engaged to write, and
thinking I was doing him good. I hoped his wits would soon return
to him. Mine returned to me, and I wrote in The Universal Visitor no
longer.

Friday, April 7, I dined with him at a Tavern, with a numerous company.

One of the company suggested an internal objection to the antiquity
of the poetry said to be Ossian's, that we do not find the wolf in it,
which must have been the case had it been of that age.

The mention of the wolf had led Johnson to think of other wild beasts;
and while Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mr. Langton were carrying on a
dialogue about something which engaged them earnestly, he, in the midst
of it, broke out, 'Pennant tells of Bears--' [what he added, I have