ng
that they were merely arrangements of so many words, and laughed at the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, for sending forth collections of
them not only in Greek and Latin, but even in Syriac, Arabick, and
other more unknown tongues. JOHNSON. 'I would have as many of these as
possible; I would have verses in every language that there are the means
of acquiring. Nobody imagines that an University is to have at once
two hundred poets; but it should be able to show two hundred scholars.
Pieresc's death was lamented, I think, in forty languages. And I would
have had at every coronation, and every death of a King, every Gaudium,
and every Luctus, University verses, in as many languages as can be
acquired. I would have the world to be thus told, "Here is a school
where every thing may be learnt."'

Having set out next day on a visit to the Earl of Pembroke, at Wilton,
and to my friend, Mr. Temple, at Mamhead, in Devonshire, and not having
returned to town till the second of May, I did not see Dr. Johnson for
a considerable time, and during the remaining part of my stay in London,
kept very imperfect notes of his conversation, which had I according
to my usual custom written out at large soon after the time, much might
have been preserved, which is now irretrievably lost.

On Monday, May 8, we went together and visited the mansions of Bedlam.
I had been informed that he had once been there before with Mr.
Wedderburne, (now Lord Loughborough,) Mr. Murphy, and Mr. Foote; and I
had heard Foote give a very entertaining account of Johnson's happening
to have his attention arrested by a man who was very furious, and who,
while beating his straw, supposed it was William Duke of Cumberland,
whom he was punishing for his cruelties in Scotland, in 1746. There was
nothing peculiarly remarkable this day; but the general contemplation of
insanity was very affecting. I accompanied him home, and dined and drank
tea with him.

On Friday, May 12, as he had been so good as to assign me a room in his
house, where I might sleep occasionally, when I happened to sit with him
to a late hour, I took possession of it this night, found every thing
in excellent order, and was attended by honest Francis with a most civil
assiduity. I asked Johnson whether I might go to a consultation with
another lawyer upon Sunday, as that appeared to me to be doing work as
much in my way, as if an artisan should work on the day appropriated for
religious rest