Upon our arrival at Oxford, Dr. Johnson and I went directly to University College, but were disappointed on finding that one of the fellows, his friend Mr. Scott, who accompanied him from Newcastle to Edinburgh, was gone to the country.  We put up at the Angel inn, and passed the evening by ourselves in easy and familiar conversation.  Talking of constitutional melancholy, he observed, ’A man so afflicted, Sir, must divert distressing thoughts, and not combat with them.’  Boswell.  ‘May not he think them down, Sir?’ Johnson.  ’No, Sir.  To attempt to think them down is madness.  He should have a lamp constantly burning in his bed-chamber during the night, and if wakefully disturbed, take a book, and read, and compose himself to rest.  To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise.’  Boswell.  ’Should not he provide amusements for himself?  Would it not, for instance, be right for him to take a course of chymistry?’ Johnson.  ’Let him take a course of chymistry, or a course of rope-dancing, or a course of any thing to which he is inclined at the time.  Let him contrive to have as many retreats for his mind as he can, as many things to which it can fly from itself.  Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy is a valuable work.  It is, perhaps, overloaded with quotation.  But there is great spirit and great power in what Burton says, when he writes from his own mind.’

Next morning we visited Dr. Wetherell, Master of University College, with whom Dr. Johnson conferred on the most advantageous mode of disposing of the books printed at the Clarendon press.  I often had occasion to remark, Johnson loved business, loved to have his wisdom actually operate on real life.

We then went to Pembroke College, and waited on his old friend Dr. Adams, the master of it, whom I found to be a most polite, pleasing, communicative man.  Before his advancement to the headship of his college, I had intended to go and visit him at Shrewsbury, where he was rector of St. Chad’s, in order to get from him what particulars he could recollect of Johnson’s academical life.  He now obligingly gave me part of that authentick information, which, with what I afterwards owed to his kindness, will be found incorporated in its proper place in this work.

Dr. Adams told us, that in some of the Colleges at Oxford, the fellows had excluded the students from social intercourse with them in the common room.  Johnson.  ’They are in the right, Sir:  there can be no real conversation, no fair exertion of mind amongst them, if the young men are by; for a man who has a character does not choose to stake it in their presence.’  Boswell.  ’But, Sir, may there not be very good conversation without a contest for superiority?’ Johnson.  ’No animated conversation, Sir, for it cannot be but one or other will come off superiour.  I do not mean that the victor must have the better of the argument, for he may take the weak side; but his superiority of parts and knowledge will necessarily appear:  and he to whom he thus shews himself superiour is lessened in the eyes of the young men.’