times mighty coarse. Garrick is under many restraints from which Foote is free." WILKES. "Garrick's wit is more like Lord Chesterfield's." JOHNSON. "The first time I was in

company with Foote was at Fitzherbert's.1 Having no good opinion of the fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased; and it is very difficult to please a man against his will. I went on eating my dinner pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind him. But the dog was so very comical that I was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, throw myself back upon my chair, and fairly laugh it out. No, sir, he was irresistible. He, upon one occasion experienced in an extraordinary degree the efficacy of his powers of entertaining. Amongst the many and various modes which he tried of getting money, he became a partner with a small-beer brewer, and he was to have a share of the profits for procuring customers amongst his numerous acquaintance. Fitzherbert was one who took his small-beer; but it was so bad that the servants resolved not to drink it. They were at some loss how to notify their resolution, being afraid of offending their master, who they knew liked Foote much as a companion. At last they fixed upon a little black boy, who was rather a favorite, to deliver their remonstrance; and having invested him with the whole authority of the kitchen, he was to inform Mr. Fitzherbert, in all their names, upon a certain day, that they would drink Foote's small-beer no longer. On that day Foote happened to dine at Fitzherbert's, and this boy served at table; he was so delighted with Foote's stories and merriment and grimace that when he went downstairs he told them, 'This is the finest man I have ever seen. I will not deliver your message. I will drink his small-beer.'"

Somebody observed that Garrick could not have done this. WILKES. "Garrick would have made the small-beer still smaller. He is now leaving the stage; but he will play Scrub2

1.

Fitzherbert. For his wife, see p. 393, note 1.

2. Scrub. In Farquhar's Beaux Stratagem. “Scrub thus describes his duties: 'Of a Monday, I drive the coach, of a Tuesday, I drive the plow, on Wednesday, I follow the hounds, a Thursday, I dun the tenants, on Friday, I go to market, on Saturday, I draw warrants, and a Sunday I draw beer.'' Birkbeck Hill.

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all his life." I knew that Johnson would let nobody attack Garrick but himself, as Garrick said to me, and I had heard him praise his liberality; so I said, loudly, "I have heard Garrick is liberal." JOHNSON. "Yes, sir, I know that Garrick has given away more money than any man in England that I am acquainted with, and that not from ostentatious views. Garrick was very poor when he began life; so when he came to have money, he probably was very unskillful in giving away, and saved when he should not. But Garrick began to be liberal as soon as he could; and I am of opinion the reputation of avarice which he has had has been very lucky for him. You despise a man for avarice, but do not hate him. Garrick might have been much better attacked for living with more splendor than is suitable to a player; if they had had the wit to have assaulted him in that quarter, they might have galled him more. But they have kept clamoring about his avarice, which has rescued him from much obloquy and envy."

Talking of the great difficulty of obtaining authentic information for biography, Johnson told us, "When I was a young fellow I wanted to write the Life of Dryden,1 and in order to get materials, I applied to the only two persons then alive who had seen him; these were old Swinney and old Cibber.3

1. Dryden. Dryden died only eight years before Johnson's birth. 2. Swinney. Owen MacSwinney, manager of the Haymarket (theater) 1706-10; of Drury Lane, 1710-11; then again of the Haymarket; he finally went bankrupt and lived abroad twenty years to escape his creditors.

3. Old Cibber. In the Revolution of 1688 he was old enough to enlist for William of Orange. He later became actor, author, and the manager of Drury Lane Theater. He played would-be fops with an exquisite precision and wit, wrote one of the best comedies in the language (The Careless Husband), composed an autobiography (his "Apology"), the gossiping good humor of which increased rather than diminished the annoyance of his enemies, and died, aged eighty-six, in 1757. Johnson's insistent prejudice against him was perhaps colored by the fact that he was a Whig, had been pilloried by Pope in the Dunciad, and was willing to describe himself as "an inconsistent creature always full of spirits, in some small capacity to do right, but in a more frequent alacrity to do wrong." It is difficult to say whether his worst blunder was writing bad odes or letting the king make him poet laureate for doing so.

•

Swinney's information was no more than this, That at Will's coffee-house Dryden had a particular chair for himself, which was set by the fire in winter, and was then called his winterchair; and that it was carried out for him to the balcony in summer, and was then called his summer chair. Cibber could tell no more but that he remembered him 'a decent old man, arbiter of critical disputes at Will's.' You are to consider that Cibber was then at a great distance from Dryden, had perhaps one leg only in the room, and durst not draw in the other." BOSWELL. "Yet Cibber was a man of observation?" JOHNSON. "I think not." BOSWELL. "You will allow his Apology to be well done." JOHNSON. "Very well done, to be sure, sir. That book is a striking proof of the justice of Pope's remark:

Each might his several province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand."

BOSWELL. "And his plays are good." JOHNSON. "Yes; but that was his trade; l'esprit du corps; he had been all his life among players and play-writers. I wondered that he had so little to say in conversation, for he had kept the best company, and learned all that can be got by the ear. He abused Pindar to me, and then showed me an ode of his own, with an absurd couplet, making a linnet soar on an eagle's wing. I told him that when the ancients made a simile, they always made it like something real."

Mr. Wilkes remarked that "among all the bold flights of Shakespeare's imagination, the boldest was making Birnam wood march to Dunsinane; creating a wood where there never was a shrub; a wood in Scotland! ha! ha! ha!" And he also observed that "the clannish slavery of the Highlands of Scotland was the single exception to Milton's remark of 'the mountain nymph, sweet Liberty,' being worshiped in all hilly countries.". "When I was at Inverary," said he, "on a visit to my old friend Archibald, Duke of Argyle,1 his dependents congratulated me on being such a favorite of his Grace. I said, 'It is then,

1. Duke of Argyle. Of the great Campbell family; head of the Campbell clan.

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gentlemen, truly lucky for me; for if I had displeased the Duke, and he had wished it, there is not a Campbell among you but would have been ready to bring John Wilkes's head to him in a charger. It would have been only

Off with his head! So much for Aylesbury.'

I was then member for Aylesbury.

Mr. Arthur Lee mentioned some Scotch who had taken possession of a barren part of America, and wondered why they should choose it. JOHNSON. "Why, sir, all barrenness is comparative. The Scotch would not know it to be barren." BOSWELL. "Come, come, he is flattering the English. You have now been in Scotland, sir, and say if you did not see meat and drink1 enough there." JOHNSON. "Why yes, sir; meat and drink enough to give the inhabitants sufficient strength to run away from home." All these quick and lively sallies were said sportively, quite in jest, and with a smile, which showed that he meant only wit. When I claimed a superiority for Scotland over England in one respect, that no man can be arrested there for a debt merely because another swears it against him; but there must first be judgment of a court of law ascertaining its justice; and that a seizure of the person before judgment is obtained can take place only if his creditor should swear that he is about to fly from the country: WILKES. "That, I should think, may be safely sworn of all the Scotch nation." JOHNSON (to Mr. Wilkes). "You must know, sir, I lately took my friend Boswell and showed him genuine civilized life in an English provincial town. I turned him loose at Lichfield, my native city, that he might see for once real civility; for you know he lives among savages in Scotland, and among rakes in London."

1. Meat and drink. "I bought some speldings, fish (generally whitings) salted and dried in a particular manner, being dipped in the sea, and dried in the sun, and eaten by the Scots by way of a relish. [Johnson] had never seen them, though they were sold in London. I insisted on scottifying his palate; but he was very reluctant. With difficulty I prevailed with him to let a bit of one of them lie in his mouth. He did not like it." Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.

"Nobody enjoyed a laugh at the expense of the Scotch more than Boswell, at least when it came from Johnson." Lettsom.

WILKES. "Except when he is with grave, sober, decent people, like you and me. JOHNSON (smiling). "And we ashamed of him."

They were quite frank and easy. Johnson told the story of his asking Mrs. Macaulay to allow her footman to sit down with them, to prove the ridiculousness of the arguments for the equality of mankind; and he said to me afterwards, with a nod of satisfaction, "You saw Mr. Wilkes acquiesced." Wilkes talked with all imaginable freedom of the ludicrous title given to the Attorney-General, Diabolus Regis; adding, “I have reason to know something about that officer; for I was prosecuted for a libel." Johnson, who many people would have supposed must have been furiously angry at hearing this talked of so lightly, said not a word. He was now, indeed, "a good-humored fellow." After dinner we had an accession of Mrs. Knowles, the Quaker lady, well known for her various talents, and of Mr. Alderman Lee. Amidst some patriotic groans, somebody (I think the Alderman) said, "Poor old England is lost." JOHNSON. "Sir, it is not so much to be lamented that old England is lost, as that the Scotch have found it."1

Mr. Wilkes held a candle to show a fine print of a beautiful female figure which hung in the room, and pointed out the elegant contour with the finger of an arch connoisseur. He afterwards in a conversation with me waggishly insisted that all the time Johnson showed visible signs of a fervent admiration of the corresponding charms of the fair Quaker.

This record, though by no means so perfect as I could wish, will serve to give a notion of a very curious interview, which was not only pleasing at the time, but had the agreeable and

1. Have found it. Especially since 1762, when the appointment of the Scotchman Lord Bute as chief minister of the Crown led many of his countrymen to try their fortune in London.

2. Agreeable. "For my part I begin to settle and keep company with grave aldermen. I dined yesterday in the Poultry with Mr. Alderman Wilkes, and Mr. Alderman Lee, and Counsellor Lee, his brother. There sat you the while, so sober, with your W- -'s and your H- -'8, and my aunt and her trumpet; and when they are gone, you think by chance on Johnson, what he is doing, what should he be doing? He is breaking jokes with Jack Wilkes upon the Scots. Such, Madam, are the vicissitudes of things." Johnson to Mrs. Thrale.