" said Johnson on another occasion,
when Boswell was cross-examining a third person about him in his
presence. "You have but two subjects, yourself and me. I am sick of
both." Boswell, however, was not to be repelled by such a retort as
this, or even by ruder rebuffs. Once when discussing the means of
getting a friend to leave London, Johnson said in revenge for a previous
offence, "Nay, sir, we'll send you to him. If your presence doesn't
drive a man out of his house, nothing will." Boswell was "horribly
shocked," but he still stuck to his victim like a leech, and pried into
the minutest details of his life and manners. He observed with
conscientious accuracy that though Johnson abstained from milk one
fast-day, he did not reject it when put in his cup. He notes the
whistlings and puffings, the trick of saying "too-too-too" of his idol:
and it was a proud day when he won a bet by venturing to ask Johnson
what he did with certain scraped bits of orange-peel. His curiosity was
not satisfied on this occasion; but it would have made him the prince of
interviewers in these days. Nothing delighted him so much as rubbing
shoulders with any famous or notorious person. He scraped acquaintance
with Voltaire, Wesley, Rousseau, and Paoli, as well as with Mrs. Rudd, a
forgotten heroine of the _Newgate Calendar_. He was as eager to talk to
Hume the sceptic, or Wilkes the demagogue, as to the orthodox Tory,
Johnson; and, if repelled, it was from no deficiency in daring. In 1767,
he took advantage of his travels in Corsica to introduce himself to Lord
Chatham, then Prime Minister. The letter moderately ends by asking,
"_Could your lordship find time to honour me now and then with a
letter?_ I have been told how favourably your lordship has spoken of me.
To correspond with a Paoli and with a Chatham is enough to keep a young
man ever ardent in the pursuit of virtuous fame." No other young man of
the day, we may be sure, would have dared to make such a proposal to the
majestic orator.

His absurd vanity, and the greedy craving for notoriety at any cost,
would have made Boswell the most offensive of mortals, had not his
unfeigned good-humour disarmed enmity. Nobody could help laughing, or be
inclined to take offence at his harmless absurdities. Burke said of him
that he had so much good-humour naturally, that it was scarcely a
virtue. His vanity, in fact, did not generate affectation. Most vain men
are vain of qualities which they do not