ir, sir," cried Johnson, "I am
obliged to you, sir," bowing and turning to him, with a look for some
time of "surly virtue," and soon of complacency.

Gradually the conversation became cordial. Johnson told of the
fascination exercised by Foote, who, like Wilkes, had succeeded in
pleasing him against his will. Foote once took to selling beer, and it
was so bad that the servants of Fitzherbert, one of his customers,
resolved to protest. They chose a little black boy to carry their
remonstrance; but the boy waited at table one day when Foote was
present, and returning to his companions, said, "This is the finest man
I have ever seen. I will not deliver your message; I will drink his
beer." From Foote the transition was easy to Garrick, whom Johnson, as
usual, defended against the attacks of others. He maintained that
Garrick's reputation for avarice, though unfounded, had been rather
useful than otherwise. "You despise a man for avarice, but you do not
hate him." The clamour would have been more effectual, had it been
directed against his living with splendour too great for a player.
Johnson went on to speak of the difficulty of getting biographical
information. When he had wished to write a life of Dryden, he applied to
two living men who remembered him. One could only tell him that Dryden
had a chair by the fire at Will's Coffee-house in winter, which was
moved to the balcony in summer. The other (Cibber) could only report
that he remembered Dryden as a "decent old man, arbiter of critical
disputes at Will's."

Johnson and Wilkes had one point in common--a vigorous prejudice against
the Scotch, and upon this topic they cracked their jokes in friendly
emulation. When they met upon a later occasion (1781), they still
pursued this inexhaustible subject. Wilkes told how a privateer had
completely plundered seven Scotch islands, and re-embarked with three
and sixpence. Johnson now remarked in answer to somebody who said "Poor
old England is lost!" "Sir, it is not so much to be lamented that old
England is lost, as that the Scotch have found it." "You must know,
sir," he said to Wilkes, "that I lately took my friend Boswell and
showed him genuine civilized life in an English provincial town. I
turned him loose at Lichfield, that he might see for once real civility,
for you know he lives among savages in Scotland and among rakes in
London." "Except," said Wilkes, "when he is with grave, sober, decent
people like you and me."