always delighted in fighting with his gigantic backer close behind him.  Johnson, as he had doubtless expected, chimed in with the argument.  “You should do your best,” said Johnson, “to diminish the authority, as well as dispute the arguments of your adversary, because most people are biased more by personal respect than by reasoning.”  “You would not jostle a chimney-sweeper,” said Adams.  “Yes,” replied Johnson, “if it were necessary to jostle him down.”

The pair proceeded by post-chaise past Blenheim, and dined at a good inn at Chapelhouse.  Johnston boasted of the superiority, long since vanished if it ever existed, of English to French inns, and quoted with great emotion Shenstone’s lines—­

  Whoe’er has travell’d life’s dull round,
    Where’er his stages may have been,
  Must sigh to think he still has found
    The warmest welcome at an inn.

As they drove along rapidly in the post-chaise, he exclaimed, “Life has not many better things than this.”  On another occasion he said that he should like to spend his life driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman, clever enough to add to the conversation.  The pleasure was partly owing to the fact that his deafness was less troublesome in a carriage.  But he admitted that there were drawbacks even to this pleasure.  Boswell asked him whether he would not add a post-chaise journey to the other sole cause of happiness—­namely, drunkenness.  “No, sir,” said Johnson, “you are driving rapidly from something or to something.”

They went to Birmingham, where Boswell pumped Hector about Johnson’s early days, and saw the works of Boulton, Watt’s partner, who said to him, “I sell here, sir, what all the world desires to have—­power.”  Thence they went to Lichfield, and met more of the rapidly thinning circle of Johnson’s oldest friends.  Here Boswell was a little scandalized by Johnson’s warm exclamation on opening a letter—­“One of the most dreadful things that has happened in my time!” This turned out to be the death of Thrale’s only son.  Boswell thought the phrase too big for the event, and was some time before he could feel a proper concern.  He was, however, “curious to observe how Dr. Johnson would be affected,” and was again a little scandalized by the reply to his consolatory remark that the Thrales still had daughters.  “Sir,” said Johnson, “don’t you know how you yourself think?  Sir, he wishes to propagate his name.”  The great man was actually putting the family sentiment of a brewer in the same category with the sentiments of the heir of Auchinleck.  Johnson, however, calmed down, but resolved to hurry back to London.  They stayed a night at Taylor’s, who remarked that he had fought a good many battles for a physician, one of their common friends.  “But you should consider, sir,” said Johnson, “that by every one of your victories he is a loser; for every man of whom you get the better will be very angry, and resolve not to employ him, whereas if people get the better of you in argument about him, they will think ’We’ll send for Dr. ——­ nevertheless!’”