conversation.  As the interview went on, he even ventured to make a remark or two, which were very civilly received; Davies consoled him at his departure by assuring him that the great man liked him very well.  “I cannot conceive a more humiliating position,” said Beauclerk on another occasion, “than to be clapped on the back by Tom Davies.”  For the present, however, even Tom Davies was a welcome encourager to one who, for the rest, was not easily rebuffed.  A few days afterwards Boswell ventured a call, was kindly received and detained for some time by “the giant in his den.”  He was still a little afraid of the said giant, who had shortly before administered a vigorous retort to his countryman Blair.  Blair had asked Johnson whether he thought that any man of a modern age could have written Ossian.  “Yes, sir,” replied Johnson, “many men, many women, and many children.”  Boswell, however, got on very well, and before long had the high honour of drinking a bottle of port with Johnson at the Mitre, and receiving, after a little autobiographical sketch, the emphatic approval, “Give me your hand, I have taken a liking to you.”

In a very short time Boswell was on sufficiently easy terms with Johnson, not merely to frequent his levees but to ask him to dinner at the Mitre.  He gathered up, though without the skill of his later performances, some fragments of the conversational feast.  The great man aimed another blow or two at Scotch prejudices.  To an unlucky compatriot of Boswell’s, who claimed for his country a great many “noble wild prospects,” Johnson replied, “I believe, sir, you have a great many, Norway, too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects.  But, sir, let me tell you the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England.”  Though Boswell makes a slight remonstrance about the “rude grandeur of Nature” as seen in “Caledonia,” he sympathized in this with his teacher.  Johnson said afterwards, that he never knew any one with “such a gust for London.”  Before long he was trying Boswell’s tastes by asking him in Greenwich Park, “Is not this very fine?” “Yes, sir,” replied the promising disciple, “but not equal to Fleet Street.”  “You are right, sir,” said the sage; and Boswell illustrates his dictum by the authority of a “very fashionable baronet,” and, moreover, a baronet from Rydal, who declared that the fragrance of a May evening in the country might be very well, but that he preferred the smell of a flambeau at the playhouse.  In more serious moods Johnson delighted his new disciple by discussions upon theological, social, and literary topics.  He argued with an unfortunate friend of Boswell’s, whose mind, it appears, had been poisoned by Hume, and who was, moreover, rash enough to undertake the defence of principles of political equality.  Johnson’s view of all propagators of new opinions was tolerably simple.  “Hume, and other sceptical innovators,” he said, “are