’It is a shame that authours are not now better patronized.’  JOHNSON.  ’No, Sir.  If learning cannot support a man, if he must sit with his hands across till somebody feeds him, it is as to him a bad thing, and it is better as it is.  With patronage, what flattery! what falsehood!  While a man is in equilibrio, he throws truth among the multitude, and lets them take it as they please:  in patronage, he must say what pleases his patron, and it is an equal chance whether that be truth or falsehood.’  WATSON.  ’But is not the case now, that, instead of flattering one person, we flatter the age?’ JOHNSON.  ’No, Sir.  The world always lets a man tell what he thinks, his own way.  I wonder, however, that so many people have written, who might have let it alone.  That people should endeavour to excel in conversation, I do not wonder; because in conversation praise is instantly reverberated[174].’

We talked of change of manners.  Dr. Johnson observed, that our drinking less than our ancestors was owing to the change from ale to wine.’  I remember, (said he,) when all the decent people in Lichfield got drunk every night, and were not the worse thought of[175].  Ale was cheap, so you pressed strongly.  When a man must bring a bottle of wine, he is not in such haste.  Smoking has gone out.  To be sure, it is a shocking thing, blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people’s mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us.  Yet I cannot account, why a thing which requires so little exertion, and yet preserves the mind from total vacuity, should have gone out[176].  Every man has something by which he calms himself:  beating with his feet, or so[177].  I remember when people in England changed a shirt only once a week[178]:  a Pandour, when he gets a shirt, greases it to make it last.  Formerly, good tradesmen had no fire but in the kitchen; never in the parlour, except on Sunday.  My father, who was a magistrate of Lichfield, lived thus.  They never began to have a fire in the parlour, but on leaving off business, or some great revolution of their life.’  Dr. Watson said, the hall was as a kitchen, in old squires’ houses.  JOHNSON.  ’No, Sir.  The hall was for great occasions, and never was used for domestick refection[179].’  We talked of the Union, and what money it had brought into Scotland.  Dr. Watson observed, that a little money formerly went as far as a great deal now.  JOHNSON.  ’In speculation, it seems that a smaller quantity of money, equal in value to a larger quantity, if equally divided, should produce the same effect.  But it is not so in reality.  Many more conveniences and elegancies are enjoyed where money is plentiful, than where it is scarce.  Perhaps a great familiarity with it, which arises from plenty, makes us more easily part with it.’