While he was in this mood, I was unfortunate enough, simply perhaps, but I could not help thinking, undeservedly, to come within ’the whiff and wind of his fell sword[727].’  I asked him, if he had ever been accustomed to wear a night-cap.  He said ‘No.’  I asked, if it was best not to wear one.  JOHNSON.  ’Sir, I had this custom by chance, and perhaps no man shall ever know whether it is best to sleep with or without a night-cap.’  Soon afterwards he was laughing at some deficiency in the Highlands, and said, ‘One might as well go without shoes and stockings.’  Thinking to have a little hit at his own deficiency, I ventured to add,------’ or without a night-cap, Sir.’  But I had better have been silent; for he retorted directly.  ’I do not see the connection there (laughing).  Nobody before was ever foolish enough to ask whether it was best to wear a night-cap or not.  This comes of being a little wrong-headed.’  He carried the company along with him:  and yet the truth is, that if he had always worn a night-cap, as is the common practice, and found the Highlanders did not wear one, he would have wondered at their barbarity; so that my hit was fair enough.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30.

There was as great a storm of wind and rain as I have almost ever seen, which necessarily confined us to the house; but we were fully compensated by Dr. Johnson’s conversation.  He said, he did not grudge Burke’s being the first man in the House of Commons, for he was the first man every where; but he grudged that a fellow who makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar cruet, should make a figure in the House of Commons, merely by having the knowledge of a few forms, and being furnished with a little occasional information[728].  He told us, the first time he saw Dr. Young was at the house of Mr. Richardson, the author of Clarissa.  He was sent for, that the doctor might read to him his Conjectures on original Composition[729], which he did, and Dr. Johnson made his remarks; and he was surprized to find Young receive as novelties, what he thought very common maxims.  He said, he believed Young was not a great scholar, nor had studied regularly the art of writing[730]; that there were very fine things in his Night Thoughts[731], though you could not find twenty lines together without some extravagance.  He repeated two passages from his Love of Fame,—­the characters of Brunetta[732] and Stella[733], which he praised highly.  He said Young pressed him much to come to Wellwyn.  He always intended it, but never went[734].  He was sorry when Young died.  The cause of quarrel between Young and his son, he told us, was, that his son insisted Young should turn away a clergyman’s widow, who lived with him, and who, having acquired great influence over the father, was saucy to the son.  Dr. Johnson said, she could not conceal her resentment at him, for saying to Young, that ’an old man should not resign himself to the management of any body.’  I asked him, if there was any improper connection between them.  ’No, Sir, no more than between two statues.  He was past fourscore, and she a very coarse woman.  She read to him, and I suppose made his coffee, and frothed his chocolate, and did such things as an old man wishes to have done for him.’