His virtue thawed instead of becoming more rigid
in the North. "This evening," records Boswell of their visit to an
Hebridean chief, "one of our married ladies, a lively pretty little
woman, good-humouredly sat down upon Dr. Johnson's knee, and being
encouraged by some of the company, put her hands round his neck and
kissed him. 'Do it again,' said he, 'and let us see who will tire
first.' He kept her on his knee some time whilst he and she drank
tea."

The Rev. Dr. Maxwell relates in his "Collectanea," that "Two young
women from Staffordshire visited him when I was present, to consult
him on the subject of Methodism, to which they were inclined. 'Come,'
said he, 'you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the Mitre,
and we will talk over that subject:' which they did, and after dinner
he took one of them upon his knee, and fondled her for half an hour
together." [1]

[Footnote 1: "Amongst his singularities, his love of conversing with
the prostitutes he met in the streets, was not the least. He has been
known to carry some of these unfortunate creatures into a tavern, for
the sake of striving to awaken in them a proper sense of their
condition. I remember, he said, once asking one of them for what
purpose she supposed her Maker had bestowed on her so much beauty.
Her answer was, 'To please the gentlemen, to be sure; for what other
purpose could it be given me?" _(Johnsoniana.)_ He once carried one,
fainting from exhaustion, home on his back.]

Women almost always like men who like women; or as the phenomenon is
explained by Pope--

"Lust, through some certain strainers well refined, Is gentle love,
and charms all womankind."

Johnson, despite of his unwieldy figure, scarred features and uncouth
gestures, was a favourite with the fair, and talked of affairs of the
heart as things of which he was entitled to speak from personal
experience as confidently as of any other moral or social topics. He
told Mrs. Thrale, without the smallest consciousness of presumption
or what Mr. Square would term the unfitness of things, of his and
Lord Lyttleton's having contended for Miss Boothby's preference with
an emulation that occasioned hearty disgust and ended in lasting
animosity. "You may see," he added, when the Lives of the Poets were
printed, "that dear Boothby is at my heart still. She would delight
in that fellow Lyttleton's company though, all that I could do, and I
cannot forgive even his memory the preference