Let me now gather some gold dust,—­some more fragments of Dr. Johnson’s conversation, without regard to order of time.  He said, ’he thought very highly of Bentley; that no man now went so far in the kinds of learning that he cultivated[511]; that the many attacks on him were owing to envy, and to a desire of being known, by being in competition with such a man; that it was safe to attack him, because he never answered his opponents, but let them die away[512].  It was attacking a man who would not beat them, because his beating them would make them live the longer.  And he was right not to answer; for, in his hazardous method of writing, he could not but be often enough wrong; so it was better to leave things to their general appearance, than own himself to have erred in particulars.’  He said, ’Mallet was the prettiest drest puppet about town, and always kept good company[513].  That, from his way of talking he saw, and always said, that he had not written any part of the Life of the Duke of Marlborough, though perhaps he intended to do it at some time, in which case he was not culpable in taking the pension[514].  That he imagined the Duchess furnished the materials for her Apology, which Hooke wrote, and Hooke furnished the words and the order, and all that in which the art of writing consists.  That the duchess had not superior parts, but was a bold frontless woman, who knew how to make the most of her opportunities in life.  That Hooke got a large sum of money for writing her Apology[515].  That he wondered Hooke should have been weak enough to insert so profligate a maxim, as that to tell another’s secret to one’s friend is no breach of confidence[516]; though perhaps Hooke, who was a virtuous man[517], as his History shews, and did not wish her well, though he wrote her Apology, might see its ill tendency, and yet insert it at her desire.  He was acting only ministerially.’  I apprehended, however, that Hooke was bound to give his best advice.  I speak as a lawyer.  Though I have had clients whose causes I could not, as a private man, approve; yet, if I undertook them, I would not do any thing that might be prejudicial to them, even at their desire, without warning them of their danger.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11.

It was a storm of wind and rain; so we could not set out.  I wrote some of this Journal, and talked a while with Dr. Johnson in his room, and passed the day, I cannot well say how, but very pleasantly.  I was here amused to find Mr. Cumberland’s comedy of the Fashionable Lover[518], in which he has very well drawn a Highland character, Colin M’Cleod, of the same name with the family under whose roof we now were.  Dr. Johnson was much pleased with the Laird of Macleod, who is indeed a most promising youth, and with a noble spirit struggles with difficulties, and endeavours to preserve his people.  He has been left with an incumbrance of forty thousand pounds