* Probably Richard Brinsley Sheridan, whose romantic marriage with the beautiful Elizabeth Linley took place in 1773.  He became a member of the Club on Johnson’s proposal.  See below, p. 325.—­Ed.

Johnson arraigned the modern politicks of this country, as entirely devoid of all principle of whatever kind.  ’Politicks (said he,) are now nothing more than means of rising in the world.  With this sole view do men engage in politicks, and their whole conduct proceeds upon it.’

Somebody found fault with writing verses in a dead language, maintaining that they were merely arrangements of so many words, and laughed at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, for sending forth collections of them not only in Greek and Latin, but even in Syriac, Arabick, and other more unknown tongues.  Johnson.  ’I would have as many of these as possible; I would have verses in every language that there are the means of acquiring.  Nobody imagines that an University is to have at once two hundred poets; but it should be able to show two hundred scholars.  Pieresc’s death was lamented, I think, in forty languages.  And I would have had at every coronation, and every death of a King, every Gaudium, and every Luctus, University verses, in as many languages as can be acquired.  I would have the world to be thus told, “Here is a school where every thing may be learnt."’

Having set out next day on a visit to the Earl of Pembroke, at Wilton, and to my friend, Mr. Temple, at Mamhead, in Devonshire, and not having returned to town till the second of May, I did not see Dr. Johnson for a considerable time, and during the remaining part of my stay in London, kept very imperfect notes of his conversation, which had I according to my usual custom written out at large soon after the time, much might have been preserved, which is now irretrievably lost.

On Monday, May 8, we went together and visited the mansions of Bedlam.  I had been informed that he had once been there before with Mr. Wedderburne, (now Lord Loughborough,) Mr. Murphy, and Mr. Foote; and I had heard Foote give a very entertaining account of Johnson’s happening to have his attention arrested by a man who was very furious, and who, while beating his straw, supposed it was William Duke of Cumberland, whom he was punishing for his cruelties in Scotland, in 1746.  There was nothing peculiarly remarkable this day; but the general contemplation of insanity was very affecting.  I accompanied him home, and dined and drank tea with him.

On Friday, May 12, as he had been so good as to assign me a room in his house, where I might sleep occasionally, when I happened to sit with him to a late hour, I took possession of it this night, found every thing in excellent order, and was attended by honest Francis with a most civil assiduity.  I asked Johnson whether I might go to a consultation with another lawyer upon Sunday, as that appeared to me to be doing