, 'Here
is an errour, Sir; you have made Genius feminine.' 'Palpable, Sir;
(cried the enthusiast,) I know it. But (in a lower tone,) it was to
pay a compliment to the Duchess of Devonshire, with which her Grace was
pleased. She is walking across Coxheath, in the military uniform, and I
suppose her to be the Genius of Britain.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, you are giving
a reason for it; but that will not make it right. You may have a reason
why two and two should make five; but they will still make but four.'

Although I was several times with him in the course of the following
days, such it seems were my occupations, or such my negligence, that I
have preserved no memorial of his conversation till Friday, March 26,
when I visited him. He said he expected to be attacked on account of his
Lives of the Poets. 'However (said he,) I would rather be attacked than
unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an authour is to be silent
as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it
is still worse; an assault may be unsuccessful; you may have more
men killed than you kill; but if you starve the town, you are sure of
victory.'

Talking of a friend of ours associating with persons of very discordant
principles and characters; I said he was a very universal man, quite a
man of the world. JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; but one may be so much a man
of the world as to be nothing in the world. I remember a passage in
Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, which he was afterwards fool enough to
expunge: "I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing."' BOSWELL.
'That was a fine passage.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir: there was another fine
passage too, which be struck out: "When I was a young man, being anxious
to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions.
But I soon gave this over; for, I found that generally what was new was
false."' I said I did not like to sit with people of whom I had not a
good opinion. JOHNSON. 'But you must not indulge your delicacy too much;
or you will be a tete-a-tete man all your life.'

During my stay in London this spring, I find I was unaccountably
negligent in preserving Johnson's sayings, more so than at any time when
I was happy enough to have an opportunity of hearing his wisdom and wit.
There is no help for it now. I must content myself with presenting such
scraps as I have. But I am nevertheless ashamed and vexed to think how
much has been lost. It is not that there was a bad crop this year