The stout old supporter of social authority went on to denounce the politics of the day.  He asserted that politics had come to mean nothing but the art of rising in the world.  He contrasted the absence of any principles with the state of the national mind during the stormy days of the seventeenth century.  This gives the pith of Johnston’s political prejudices.  He hated Whigs blindly from his cradle; but he justified his hatred on the ground that they were now all “bottomless Whigs,” that is to say, that pierce where you would, you came upon no definite creed, but only upon hollow formulae, intended as a cloak for private interest.  If Burke and one or two of his friends be excepted, the remark had but too much justice.

In 1776, Boswell found Johnson rejoicing in the prospect of a journey to Italy with the Thrales.  Before starting he was to take a trip to the country, in which Boswell agreed to join.  Boswell gathered up various bits of advice before their departure.  One seems to have commended itself to him as specially available for practice.  “A man who had been drinking freely,” said the moralist, “should never go into a new company.  He would probably strike them as ridiculous, though he might be in unison with those who had been drinking with him.”  Johnson propounded another favourite theory.  “A ship,” he said, “was worse than a gaol.  There is in a gaol better air, better company, better conveniency of every kind; and a ship has the additional disadvantage of being in danger.”

On March 19th, they went by coach to the Angel at Oxford; and next morning visited the Master of University College, who chose with Boswell to act in opposition to a very sound bit of advice given by Johnson soon afterwards—­perhaps with some reference to the proceeding.  “Never speak of a man in his own presence; it is always indelicate and may be offensive.”  The two, however, discussed Johnson without reserve.  The Master said that he would have given Johnson a hundred pounds for a discourse on the British Constitution; and Boswell suggested that Johnson should write two volumes of no great bulk upon Church and State, which should comprise the whole substance of the argument.  “He should erect a fort on the confines of each.”  Johnson was not unnaturally displeased with the dialogue, and growled out, “Why should I be always writing?”

Presently, they went to see Dr. Adams, the doctor’s old friend, who had been answering Hume.  Boswell, who had done his best to court the acquaintance of Voltaire, Rousseau, Wilkes, and Hume himself, felt it desirable to reprove Adams for having met Hume with civility.  He aired his admirable sentiments in a long speech, observing upon the connexion between theory and practice, and remarking, by way of practical application, that, if an infidel were at once vain and ugly, he might be compared to “Cicero’s beautiful image of Virtue”—­which would, as he seems to think, be a crushing retort.  Boswell