that if you met him for the first time in the street where you were stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he stepped aside to take shelter but for five minutes, he’d talk to you in such a manner, that, when you parted, you would say, this is an extraordinary man[81].  Now, you may be long enough with me, without finding any thing extraordinary.’  He said, he believed Burke was intended for the law; but either had not money enough to follow it, or had not diligence enough[82].  He said, he could not understand how a man could apply to one thing, and not to another.  ROBERTSON said, one man had more judgment, another more imagination.  JOHNSON.  ’No, Sir; it is only, one man has more mind than another.  He may direct it differently; he may, by accident, see the success of one kind of study, and take a desire to excel in it.  I am persuaded that, had Sir Isaac Newton applied to poetry, he would have made a very fine epick poem.  I could as easily apply to law as to tragick poetry.’  BOSWELL.  ’Yet, Sir, you did apply to tragick poetry, not to law.’  JOHNSON.  ’Because, Sir, I had not money to study law.  Sir, the man who has vigour, may walk to the east, just as well as to the west, if he happens to turn his head that way[83].’  BOSWELL.  ’But, Sir, ’tis like walking up and down a hill; one man will naturally do the one better than the other.  A hare will run up a hill best, from her fore-legs being short; a dog down.’  JOHNSON.  ’Nay, Sir; that is from mechanical powers.  If you make mind mechanical, you may argue in that manner.  One mind is a vice, and holds fast; there’s a good memory.  Another is a file; and he is a disputant, a controversialist.  Another is a razor; and he is sarcastical.’  We talked of Whitefield.  He said he was at the same college with him[84], and knew him before he began to be better than other people (smiling;) that he believed he sincerely meant well, but had a mixture of politicks and ostentation:  whereas Wesley thought of religion only[85].  ROBERTSON said, Whitefield had strong natural eloquence, which, if cultivated, would have done great things.  JOHNSON.  ’Why, Sir, I take it, he was at the height of what his abilities could do, and was sensible of it.  He had the ordinary advantages of education; but he chose to pursue that oratory which is for the mob[86].’  BOSWELL.  ‘He had great effect on the passions.’  JOHNSON.  ’Why, Sir, I don’t think so.  He could not represent a succession of pathetic images.  He vociferated, and made an impression. There, again, was a mind like a hammer.’  Dr. Johnson now said, a certain eminent political friend of our’s[87] was wrong, in his maxim of sticking to a certain set of men on all occasions.  ’I can see that a man may do right to stick to a party (said he;) that is to say, he is a Whig, or he is a Tory, and he thinks one of those parties upon the whole the best, and that to make it prevail, it must be generally supported, though, in particulars it may be wrong.  He takes its faggot of principles, in which there are fewer rotten sticks than in the other, though some rotten sticks to be sure; and they cannot well be separated.  But, to bind one’s self to one man, or one set of men, (who may be right to-day and wrong to-morrow,) without any general preference of system, I must disapprove[88].’