icularly
The Spleen. JOHNSON. 'I think Dodsley gave up the question. He and
Goldsmith said the same thing; only he said it in a softer manner than
Goldsmith did; for he acknowledged that there was no poetry, nothing
that towered above the common mark. You may find wit and humour in
verse, and yet no poetry. Hudibras has a profusion of these; yet it is
not to be reckoned a poem. The Spleen, in Dodsley's Collection, on which
you say he chiefly rested, is not poetry.' BOSWELL. 'Does not Gray's
poetry, Sir, tower above the common mark?' JOHNSON. Yes, Sir; but we
must attend to the difference between what men in general cannot do if
they would, and what every man may do if he would. Sixteen-string Jack*
towered above the common mark.' BOSWELL. 'Then, Sir, what is poetry?'
JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all KNOW
what light is; but it is not easy to TELL what it is.'

* A noted highwayman, who after having been several times
tried and acquitted, was at last hanged. He was remarkable
for foppery in his dress, and particularly for wearing a
bunch of sixteen strings at the knees of his breeches.
--BOSWELL.

On Friday, April 12, I dined with him at our friend Tom Davies's.
He reminded Dr. Johnson of Mr. Murphy's having paid him the highest
compliment that ever was paid to a layman, by asking his pardon for
repeating some oaths in the course of telling a story.

Johnson and I supt this evening at the Crown and Anchor tavern, in
company with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Langton, Mr. Nairne, now one of
the Scotch Judges, with the title of Lord Dunsinan, and my very worthy
friend, Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo.

We discussed the question whether drinking improved conversation and
benevolence. Sir Joshua maintained it did. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir: before
dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who
are conscious of their inferiority, have the modesty not to talk. When
they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that
modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous: but he is not improved; he
is only not sensible of his defects.' Sir Joshua said the Doctor was
talking of the effects of excess in wine; but that a moderate glass
enlivened the mind, by giving a proper circulation to the blood. 'I
am (said he,) in very good spirits, when I get up in the morning. By
dinner-time I am exhausted; wine puts me in the same state as when I
got up; and I a