I related a dispute between Goldsmith and Mr. Robert Dodsley, one day when they and I were dining at Tom Davies’s, in 1762.  Goldsmith asserted, that there was no poetry produced in this age.  Dodsley appealed to his own Collection, and maintained, that though you could not find a palace like Dryden’s Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day, you had villages composed of very pretty houses; and he mentioned particularly The Spleen.  Johnson.  ’I think Dodsley gave up the question.  He and Goldsmith said the same thing; only he said it in a softer manner than Goldsmith did; for he acknowledged that there was no poetry, nothing that towered above the common mark.  You may find wit and humour in verse, and yet no poetry.  Hudibras has a profusion of these; yet it is not to be reckoned a poem.  The Spleen, in Dodsley’s Collection, on which you say he chiefly rested, is not poetry.’  Boswell.  ’Does not Gray’s poetry, Sir, tower above the common mark?’ Johnson.  Yes, Sir; but we must attend to the difference between what men in general cannot do if they would, and what every man may do if he would.  Sixteen-string Jack* towered above the common mark.’  Boswell.  ‘Then, Sir, what is poetry?’ Johnson.  ’Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not.  We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is.’

* A noted highwayman, who after having been several times tried and acquitted, was at last hanged.  He was remarkable for foppery in his dress, and particularly for wearing a bunch of sixteen strings at the knees of his breeches.  —­Boswell.

On Friday, April 12, I dined with him at our friend Tom Davies’s.  He reminded Dr. Johnson of Mr. Murphy’s having paid him the highest compliment that ever was paid to a layman, by asking his pardon for repeating some oaths in the course of telling a story.

Johnson and I supt this evening at the Crown and Anchor tavern, in company with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Langton, Mr. Nairne, now one of the Scotch Judges, with the title of Lord Dunsinan, and my very worthy friend, Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo.

We discussed the question whether drinking improved conversation and benevolence.  Sir Joshua maintained it did.  Johnson.  ’No, Sir:  before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority, have the modesty not to talk.  When they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous:  but he is not improved; he is only not sensible of his defects.’  Sir Joshua said the Doctor was talking of the effects of excess in wine; but that a moderate glass enlivened the mind, by giving a proper circulation to the blood.  ’I am (said he,) in very good spirits, when I get up in the morning.  By dinner-time I am exhausted; wine puts me in the same state as when I got up; and I am sure that moderate drinking makes people talk better.’