Goldsmith produced some very absurd verses which had been publickly recited to an audience for money.  Johnson.  ’I can match this nonsense.  There was a poem called Eugenio, which came out some years ago, and concludes thus: 

“And now, ye trifling, self-assuming elves,
Brimful of pride, of nothing, of yourselves,
Survey Eugenio, view him o’er and o’er,
Then sink into yourselves, and be no more.”

Nay, Dryden in his poem on the Royal Society, has these lines: 

“Then we upon our globe’s last verge shall go,
And see the ocean leaning on the sky;
From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,
And on the lunar world securely pry."’

Much pleasant conversation passed, which Johnson relished with great good humour.  But his conversation alone, or what led to it, or was interwoven with it, is the business of this work.

On Saturday, May 1, we dined by ourselves at our old rendezvous, the Mitre tavern.  He was placid, but not much disposed to talk.  He observed that ’The Irish mix better with the English than the Scotch do; their language is nearer to English; as a proof of which, they succeed very well as players, which Scotchmen do not.  Then, Sir, they have not that extreme nationality which we find in the Scotch.  I will do you, Boswell, the justice to say, that you are the most UNSCOTTIFIED of your countrymen.  You are almost the only instance of a Scotchman that I have known, who did not at every other sentence bring in some other Scotchman.’

On Friday, May 7, I breakfasted with him at Mr. Thrale’s in the Borough.  While we were alone, I endeavoured as well as I could to apologise for a lady who had been divorced from her husband by act of Parliament.  I said, that he had used her very ill, had behaved brutally to her, and that she could not continue to live with him without having her delicacy contaminated; that all affection for him was thus destroyed; that the essence of conjugal union being gone, there remained only a cold form, a mere civil obligation; that she was in the prime of life, with qualities to produce happiness; that these ought not to be lost; and, that the gentleman on whose account she was divorced had gained her heart while thus unhappily situated.  Seduced, perhaps, by the charms of the lady in question, I thus attempted to palliate what I was sensible could not be justified; for when I had finished my harangue, my venerable friend gave me a proper check:  ’My dear Sir, never accustom your mind to mingle virtue and vice.  The woman’s a whore, and there’s an end on’t.’

He described the father of one of his friends thus:  ’Sir, he was so exuberant a talker at publick meeting, that the gentlemen of his county were afraid of him.  No business could be done for his declamation.’

He did not give me full credit when I mentioned that I had carried on a short conversation by signs with some Esquimaux who were then in London, particularly with one of them who was a priest.  He thought I could not make them understand me.  No man was more incredulous as to particular facts, which were at all extraordinary; and therefore no man was more scrupulously inquisitive, in order to discover the truth.