deviations, the conversation returned to this point.  Johnson and Burke agreed on a characteristic statement.  Burke said that from his experience he had learnt to think better of mankind.  “From my experience,” replied Johnson, “I have found them worse on commercial dealings, more disposed to cheat than I had any notion of; but more disposed to do one another good than I had conceived.”  “Less just, and more beneficent,” as another speaker suggested.  Johnson proceeded to say that considering the pressure of want, it was wonderful that men would do so much for each other.  The greatest liar is said to speak more truth than falsehood, and perhaps the worst man might do more good than not.  But when Boswell suggested that perhaps experience might increase our estimate of human happiness, Johnson returned to his habitual pessimism.  “No, sir, the more we inquire, the more we shall find men less happy.”  The talk soon wandered off into a disquisition upon the folly of deliberately testing the strength of our friend’s affection.

The evening ended by Johnson accepting a commission to write to a friend who had given to the Club a hogshead of claret, and to request another, with “a happy ambiguity of expression,” in the hopes that it might also be a present.

Some days afterwards, another conversation took place, which has a certain celebrity in Boswellian literature.  The scene was at Dilly’s, and the guests included Miss Seward and Mrs. Knowles, a well-known Quaker Lady.  Before dinner Johnson seized upon a book which he kept in his lap during dinner, wrapped up in the table-cloth.  His attention was not distracted from the various business of the hour, but he hit upon a topic which happily combined the two appropriate veins of thought.  He boasted that he would write a cookery-book upon philosophical principles; and declared in opposition to Miss Seward that such a task was beyond the sphere of woman.  Perhaps this led to a discussion upon the privileges of men, in which Johnson put down Mrs. Knowles, who had some hankering for women’s rights, by the Shakspearian maxim that if two men ride on a horse, one must ride behind.  Driven from her position in this world, poor Mrs. Knowles hoped that sexes might be equal in the next.  Boswell reproved her by the remark already quoted, that men might as well expect to be equal to angels.  He enforces this view by an illustration suggested by the “Rev. Mr. Brown of Utrecht,” who had observed that a great or small glass might be equally full, though not holding equal quantities.  Mr. Brown intended this for a confutation of Hume, who has said that a little Miss, dressed for a ball, may be as happy as an orator who has won some triumphant success.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Boswell remarks as a curious coincidence that the same illustration had been used by a Dr. King, a dissenting minister.  Doubtless it has been used often enough.  For one instance see Donne’s Sermons (Alford’s Edition), vol. i., p. 5.]