The importance of strict and scrupulous veracity cannot be too often inculcated.  Johnson was known to be so rigidly attentive to it, that even in his common conversation the slightest circumstance was mentioned with exact precision.  The knowledge of his having such a principle and habit made his friends have a perfect reliance on the truth of every thing that he told, however it might have been doubted if told by many others.  As an instance of this, I may mention an odd incident which he related as having happened to him one night in Fleet-street.  ’A gentlewoman (said he) begged I would give her my arm to assist her in crossing the street, which I accordingly did; upon which she offered me a shilling, supposing me to be the watchman.  I perceived that she was somewhat in liquor.’  This, if told by most people, would have been thought an invention; when told by Johnson, it was believed by his friends as much as if they had seen what passed.

We landed at the Temple-stairs, where we parted.

I found him in the evening in Mrs. Williams’s room.  Finding him still persevering in his abstinence from wine, I ventured to speak to him of it—­Johnson.  ’Sir, I have no objection to a man’s drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation.  I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it.  Every man is to judge for himself, according to the effects which he experiences.  One of the fathers tells us, he found fasting made him so peevish that he did not practise it.’

Though he often enlarged upon the evil of intoxication, he was by no means harsh and unforgiving to those who indulged in occasional excess in wine.  One of his friends, I well remember, came to sup at a tavern with him and some other gentlemen, and too plainly discovered that he had drunk too much at dinner.  When one who loved mischief, thinking to produce a severe censure, asked Johnson, a few days afterwards, ’Well, Sir, what did your friend say to you, as an apology for being in such a situation?’ Johnson answered, ’Sir, he said all that a man should say:  he said he was sorry for it.’

I again visited him on Monday.  He took occasion to enlarge, as he often did, upon the wretchedness of a sea-life.  ’A ship is worse than a gaol.  There is, in a gaol, better air, better company, better conveniency of every kind; and a ship has the additional disadvantage of being in danger.  When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.’—­’Then (said I) it would be cruel in a father to breed his son to the sea.’  Johnson.  ’It would be cruel in a father who thinks as I do.  Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life; and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession; as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life.’