memoirs of his lordship, could tell me scarcely any thing." (1)

I said, Mr. Robert Dodsley's life should be written, as he had been so much connected with the wits of his time, and by his literary merit had raised himself from the station of a footman. Mr. Warton said, he had published a little volume under the title of "The Muse in Livery." JOHNSon. "I doubt whether Dodsley's brother would thank a man who should write his life; yet Dodsley himself was not unwilling that his original low condition should be recollected. When Lord Lyttelton's 'Dialogues of the Dead' came out, one of which is between Apicius, an ancient epicure, and Dartineuf (2), a modern epicure, Dodsley said to me, 'I knew Dartineuf well, for I was once his footman.''

Biography led us to speak of Dr. John Campbell, who had written a considerable part of the "Biographia Britannica." Johnson, though he valued him highly, was of opinion that there was not so

(1) It has been mentioned to me by an accurate English friend, that Dr. Johnson could never have used the phrase almost nothing, as being English; and therefore I have put another in its At the same time, I am not quite convinced it is n good English. For the best writers use this phrase, "little or nothing," i. e. almost so little as to be nothing.

(2) This gentleman, whose proper name was Charles Dartiquenave (pronounced and commonly written Darteneuf), is now only recollected as a celebrated epicure; but he was a man of wit, pleasure, and political importance at the beginning of the last century. the associate of Swift, Pope, Addison, and Steele e-a contributor to the Tatler, and a member of the Kit-Cat Club, of which collection his portrait is one of the best. He was Paymaster of the Board of Works, and Surveyor of the royal gardens; and died in 1737. It was suspected that he was a natural son of Charles the Second, by a foreign lady; and his physiognomy seems to evidence a foreign origin. — C.

much in his great work, "A Political Survey of Great Britain," as the world had been taught to expect(1); and had said to me that he believed Campbell's disappointment on account of the bad success of that work had killed him. He this evening observed of it, "That work was his death." Mr.Warton, not adverting to his meaning, answered, "I believe so, from the great attention he bestowed on it." JOHNSON. " Nay, Sir, he died of want of attention, if he died at all by that book."

We talked of a work much in vogue at that time, written in a very mellifluous style, but which, under pretext of another subject, contained much artful infidelity. I said it was not fair to attack us unexpectedly; he should have warned us of our danger, before we entered his garden of flowery eloquence, by advertising, "Spring-guns and men-traps set here." The author had been an Oxonian, and was remembered there for having "turned Papist." I observed, that as he had changed several times— from the church of England to the church of Rome -from the church of Rome to infidelity,-I did not despair yet of seeing him a methodist preacher.

JOHNSON (laughing). "It is said that his range

has been more extensive, and that he has once been Mahometan. However, now that he has published his infidelity, he will probably persist in it." (2) BOSWELL. "I am not quite sure of that, Sir."

(1) Yet surely it is a very useful work, and of wonderful research and labour for one man to have executed.

(2) As there can be no doubt that Gibbon and his History are the author and the work here alluded to, I once though

I mentioned Sir Richard Steele having published his "Christian Hero," with the avowed purpose of obliging himself to lead a religious life; yet that his conduct was by no means strictly suitable. JOHNSON. "Steele, I believe, practised the lighter vices."

Mr. Warton, being engaged, could not sup with us at our inn; we had therefore another evening by ourselves. I asked Johnson whether a man's being forward to make himself known to eminent people, and seeing as much of life, and getting as much information as he could in every way, was not yet lessening himself by his forwardness. JOHNSON. "No, Sir; a man always makes himself greater as he increases his knowledge."

I censured some ludicrous fantastic dialogues between two coach-horses, and other such stuff, which Baretti had lately published. He joined with me, and said, "Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy' did not last." I expressed a desire to be acquainted with a lady who had been much talked

that some sceptical expressions in the celebrated 15th and 16th chapters might have prompted this sarcasm, but I am now inclined to suspect that it may have referred to some Oxford rumours of earlier infidelity. Gibbon, in his Memoirs, confesses that the erratic course of study, which finally led to his conversion to Popery, began at Oxford by a turn towards "oriental learning and an inclination to study Arabic." "His tutor," he adds, "discouraged this childish fancy." He complains, too, of the invidious whispers which were afterwards circulated in Oxford on the subject of his apostacy; and as we may be certain that Johnson did not speak without a meaning, I now believe that some whisper of this early inclination to Arabic learning and the language of the Koran may have reached Johnson, and occasioned this sarcasm, —— C. 1835.