We walked with Dr. Adams into the master’s garden, and into the common room.  Johnson. (after a reverie of meditation,) ’Ay!  Here I used to play at draughts with Phil.  Jones and Fludyer.  Jones loved beer, and did not get very forward in the church.  Fludyer turned out a scoundrel, a Whig, and said he was ashamed of having been bred at Oxford.  He had a living at Putney, and got under the eye of some retainers to the court at that time, and so became a violent Whig:  but he had been a scoundrel all along to be sure.’  Boswell.  ’Was he a scoundrel, Sir, in any other way than that of being a political scoundrel?  Did he cheat at draughts?’ Johnson.  ‘Sir, we never played for money.’

He then carried me to visit Dr. Bentham, Canon of Christ-Church, and Divinity Professor, with whose learned and lively conversation we were much pleased.  He gave us an invitation to dinner, which Dr. Johnson told me was a high honour.  ’Sir, it is a great thing to dine with the Canons of Christ-Church.’  We could not accept his invitation, as we were engaged to dine at University College.  We had an excellent dinner there, with the Master and Fellows, it being St. Cuthbert’s day, which is kept by them as a festival, as he was a saint of Durham, with which this college is much connected.

We drank tea with Dr. Horne, late President of Magdalen College, and Bishop of Norwich, of whose abilities, in different respects, the publick has had eminent proofs, and the esteem annexed to whose character was increased by knowing him personally.

We then went to Trinity College, where he introduced me to Mr. Thomas Warton, with whom we passed a part of the evening.  We talked of biography—­Johnson.  ’It is rarely well executed.  They only who live with a man can write his life with any genuine exactness and discrimination; and few people who have lived with a man know what to remark about him.  The chaplain of a late Bishop, whom I was to assist in writing some memoirs of his Lordship, could tell me scarcely any thing.’

I said, Mr. Robert Dodsley’s life should be written, as he had been so much connected with the wits of his time, and by his literary merit had raised himself from the station of a footman.  Mr. Warton said, he had published a little volume under the title of The Muse in Livery.  Johnson.  ’I doubt whether Dodsley’s brother would thank a man who should write his life:  yet Dodsley himself was not unwilling that his original low condition should be recollected.  When Lord Lyttelton’s Dialogues of the Dead came out, one of which is between Apicius, an ancient epicure, and Dartineuf, a modern epicure, Dodsley said to me, “I knew Dartineuf well, for I was once his footman."’

I mentioned Sir Richard Steele having published his Christian Hero, with the avowed purpose of obliging himself to lead a religious life; yet, that his conduct was by no means strictly suitable.  Johnson.  ’Steele, I believe, practised the lighter vices.’