It was rather worse weather than any that we had yet.  At breakfast Dr. Johnson said, ’Some cunning men choose fools for their wives, thinking to manage them, but they always fail.  There is a spaniel fool and a mule fool.  The spaniel fool may be made to do by beating.  The mule fool will neither do by words or blows; and the spaniel fool often turns mule at last:  and suppose a fool to be made do pretty well, you must have the continual trouble of making her do.  Depend upon it, no woman is the worse for sense and knowledge.[623]’ Whether afterwards he meant merely to say a polite thing, or to give his opinion, I could not be sure; but he added, ’Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant.  If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.’[624] In justice to the sex, I think it but candid to acknowledge, that, in a subsequent conversation, he told me that he was serious in what he had said.

He came to my room this morning before breakfast, to read my Journal, which he has done all along.  He often before said, ’I take great delight in reading it.’  To-day he said, ’You improve:  it grows better and better.’  I observed, there was a danger of my getting a habit of writing in a slovenly manner.  ‘Sir,’ said he, ’it is not written in a slovenly manner.  It might be printed, were the subject fit for printing[625].’  While Mr. Beaton preached to us in the dining-room, Dr. Johnson sat in his own room, where I saw lying before him a volume of Lord Bacon’s works, The Decay of Christian Piety, Monboddo’s Origin of Language, and Sterne’s Sermons[626].  He asked me to-day how it happened that we were so little together:  I told him, my Journal took up much time.  Yet, on reflection, it appeared strange to me, that although I will run from one end of London to another to pass an hour with him, I should omit to seize any spare time to be in his company, when I am settled in the same house with him.  But my Journal is really a task of much time and labour, and he forbids me to contract it.

I omitted to mention, in its place, that Dr. Johnson told Mr. M’Queen that he had found the belief of the second sight universal in Sky, except among the clergy, who seemed determined against it.  I took the liberty to observe to Mr. M’Queen, that the clergy were actuated by a kind of vanity.  ’The world, (say they,) takes us to be credulous men in a remote corner.  We’ll shew them that we are more enlightened than they think.’  The worthy man said, that his disbelief of it was from his not finding sufficient evidence; but I could perceive that he was prejudiced against it[627].