Dr. Erskine[1073] and Mr. Robert Walker, two very respectable ministers of Edinburgh, supped with us, as did the Reverend Dr. Webster.[1074] The conversation turned on the Moravian missions, and on the Methodists.  Dr. Johnson observed in general, that missionaries were too sanguine in their accounts of their success among savages, and that much of what they tell is not to be believed.  He owned that the Methodists had done good; had spread religious impressions among the vulgar part of mankind:[1075] but, he said, they had great bitterness against other Christians, and that he never could get a Methodist to explain in what he excelled others; that it always ended in the indispensible necessity of hearing one of their preachers.[1076]

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11.

Principal Robertson came to us as we sat at breakfast, he advanced to Dr. Johnson, repeating a line of Virgil, which I forget.  I suppose, either

     Post varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum[1077]—­

or

     —­multum ille et terris jactatus, et alto[1078].

Every body had accosted us with some studied compliment on our return.  Dr. Johnson said, ’I am really ashamed of the congratulations which we receive.  We are addressed as if we had made a voyage to Nova Zembla, and suffered five persecutions in Japan[1079].’  And he afterwards remarked, that, ’to see a man come up with a formal air and a Latin line, when we had no fatigue and no danger, was provoking[1080].’  I told him, he was not sensible of the danger, having lain under cover in the boat during the storm[1081]:  he was like the chicken, that hides its head under its wing, and then thinks itself safe.

Lord Elibank came to us, as did Sir William Forbes.  The rash attempt in 1745 being mentioned, I observed, that it would make a fine piece of History.  Dr. Johnson said it would.[1082] Lord Elibank doubted whether any man of this age could give it impartially.  JOHNSON.  ’A man, by talking with those of different sides, who were actors in it, and putting down all that he hears, may in time collect the materials of a good narrative.  You are to consider, all history was at first oral.  I suppose Voltaire was fifty years[1083] in collecting his Louis XIV. which he did in the way that I am proposing.’  ROBERTSON.  ’He did so.  He lived much with all the great people who were concerned in that reign, and heard them talk of everything:  and then either took Mr. Boswell’s way, of writing down what he heard, or, which is as good, preserved it in his memory; for he has a wonderful memory.’  With the leave, however, of this elegant historian, no man’s memory can preserve facts or sayings with such fidelity as may be done by writing them down when they are recent.  Dr. Robertson said, ’it was now full time to make such a collection as Dr. Johnson suggested; for many of the people who were then in arms, were dropping off; and both Whigs and