TION. Now, what is the concoction
of a play?' (Here Garrick started, and twisted himself, and seemed
sorely vexed; for Johnson told me, he believed the story was true.)
GARRICK. 'I--I--I--said FIRST concoction.' JOHNSON. (smiling,) 'Well,
he left out FIRST. And Rich, he said, refused him IN FALSE ENGLISH:
he could shew it under his hand.' GARRICK. 'He wrote to me in violent
wrath, for having refused his play: "Sir, this is growing a very serious
and terrible affair. I am resolved to publish my play. I will appeal
to the world; and how will your judgement appear?" I answered, "Sir,
notwithstanding all the seriousness, and all the terrours, I have no
objection to your publishing your play; and as you live at a great
distance, (Devonshire, I believe,) if you will send it to me, I will
convey it to the press." I never heard more of it, ha! ha! ha!'

On Friday, April 10, I found Johnson at home in the morning. We resumed
the conversation of yesterday. He put me in mind of some of it which
had escaped my memory, and enabled me to record it more perfectly than
I otherwise could have done. He was much pleased with my paying so
great attention to his recommendation in 1763, the period when our
acquaintance began, that I should keep a journal; and I could perceive
he was secretly pleased to find so much of the fruit of his mind
preserved; and as he had been used to imagine and say that he always
laboured when he said a good thing--it delighted him, on a review, to
find that his conversation teemed with point and imagery.

I said to him, 'You were yesterday, Sir, in remarkably good humour:
but there was nothing to offend you, nothing to produce irritation
or violence. There was no bold offender. There was not one capital
conviction. It was a maiden assize. You had on your white gloves.'

He found fault with our friend Langton for having been too silent. 'Sir,
(said I,) you will recollect, that he very properly took up Sir Joshua
for being glad that Charles Fox had praised Goldsmith's Traveller, and
you joined him.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, I knocked Fox on the head, without
ceremony. Reynolds is too much under Fox and Burke at present. He is
under the Fox star and the Irish constellation. He is always under some
planet.' BOSWELL. 'There is no Fox star.' JOHNSON. 'But there is a dog
star.' BOSWELL. 'They say, indeed, a fox and a dog are the same animal.'

We dined together with Mr. Scott (now Sir William Scott his Majesty's
Advocate