Johnson and Boswell had several meetings in 1769.  Boswell had the honour of introducing the two objects of his idolatry, Johnson and Paoli, and on another occasion entertained a party including Goldsmith and Garrick and Reynolds, at his lodgings in Old Bond Street.  We can still see the meeting more distinctly than many that have been swallowed by a few days of oblivion.  They waited for one of the party, Johnson kindly maintaining that six ought to be kept waiting for one, if the one would suffer more by the others sitting down than the six by waiting.  Meanwhile Garrick “played round Johnson with a fond vivacity, taking hold of the breasts of his coat, looking up in his face with a lively archness,” and complimenting him on his good health.  Goldsmith strutted about bragging of his dress, of which Boswell, in the serene consciousness of superiority to such weakness, thought him seriously vain.  “Let me tell you,” said Goldsmith, “when my tailor brought home my bloom-coloured coat, he said, ’Sir, I have a favour to beg of you; when anybody asks you who made your clothes, be pleased to mention John Filby, at the Harrow, Water Lane.’” “Why, sir,” said Johnson, “that was because he knew that the strange colour would attract crowds to gaze at it, and thus they might hear of him, and see how well he could make a coat even of so absurd a colour.”  Mr. Filby has gone the way of all tailors and bloom-coloured coats, but some of his bills are preserved.  On the day of this dinner he had delivered to Goldsmith a half-dress suit of ratteen lined with satin, costing twelve guineas, a pair of silk stocking-breeches for L2 5_s_. and a pair of bloom-coloured ditto for L1 4_s_. 6_d_.  The bill, including other items, was paid, it is satisfactory to add, in February, 1771.

The conversation was chiefly literary.  Johnson repeated the concluding lines of the Dunciad; upon which some one (probably Boswell) ventured to say that they were “too fine for such a poem—­a poem on what?” “Why,” said Johnson, “on dunces!  It was worth while being a dunce then.  Ah, sir, hadst thou lived in those days!” Johnson previously uttered a criticism which has led some people to think that he had a touch of the dunce in him.  He declared that a description of a temple in Congreve’s Mourning Bride was the finest he knew—­finer than anything in Shakspeare.  Garrick vainly protested; but Johnson was inexorable.  He compared Congreve to a man who had only ten guineas in the world, but all in one coin; whereas Shakspeare might have ten thousand separate guineas.  The principle of the criticism is rather curious.  “What I mean is,” said Johnson, “that you can show me no passage where there is simply a description of material objects, without any admixture of moral notions, which produces such an effect.”  The description of the night before Agincourt was rejected because there were men in it; and the description of Dover Cliff because the boats and the crows “impede yon fall.”  They do “not impress your mind at once with the horrible idea of immense height.  The impression is divided; you pass on by computation from one stage of the tremendous space to another.”