they had a right to visit and consult; and doubtless they were well rewarded.  I never could discover how he found time for his compositions.  He declaimed all the morning, then went to dinner at a tavern, where he commonly staid late, and then drank his tea at some friend’s house, over which he loitered a great while, but seldom took supper.  I fancy he must have read and wrote chiefly in the night, for I can scarcely recollect that he ever refused going with me to a tavern, and he often went to Ranelagh, which he deemed a place of innocent recreation.

’He frequently gave all the silver in his pocket to the poor, who watched him, between his house and the tavern where he dined.  He walked the streets at all hours, and said he was never robbed, for the rogues knew he had little money, nor had the appearance of having much.

’Though the most accessible and communicative man alive; yet when he suspected he was invited to be exhibited, he constantly spurned the invitation.

’Two young women from Staffordshire visited him when I was present, to consult him on the subject of Methodism, to which they were inclined.  “Come, (said he,) you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the Mitre, and we will talk over that subject;” which they did, and after dinner he took one of them upon his knee, and fondled her for half an hour together.

’Johnson was much attached to London:  he observed, that a man stored his mind better there, than any where else; and that in remote situations a man’s body might be feasted, but his mind was starved, and his faculties apt to degenerate, from want of exercise and competition.  No place, (he said,) cured a man’s vanity or arrogance so well as London; for as no man was either great or good per se, but as compared with others not so good or great, he was sure to find in the metropolis many his equals, and some his superiours.  He observed, that a man in London was in less danger of falling in love indiscreetly, than any where else; for there the difficulty of deciding between the conflicting pretensions of a vast variety of objects, kept him safe.  He told me, that he had frequently been offered country preferment, if he would consent to take orders; but he could not leave the improved society of the capital, or consent to exchange the exhilarating joys and splendid decorations of publick life, for the obscurity, insipidity, and uniformity of remote situations.

’Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, he said, was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.

’When exasperated by contradiction, he was apt to treat his opponents with too much acrimony:  as, “Sir, you don’t see your way through that question:”—­“Sir, you talk the language of ignorance.”  On my observing to him that a certain gentleman had remained silent the whole evening, in the midst of a very brilliant and learned society, “Sir, (said he,) the conversation overflowed, and drowned him.”