Honest Catcot seemed to pay no attention whatever to any objections, but insisted, as an end of all controversy, that we should go with him to the tower of the church of St. Mary, Redcliff, and view with our own eyes the ancient chest in which the manuscripts were found.  To this, Dr. Johnson good-naturedly agreed; and though troubled with a shortness of breathing, laboured up a long flight of steps, till we came to the place where the wonderous chest stood.  ’There, (said Cateot, with a bouncing confident credulity,) there is the very chest itself.’  After this ocular demonstration, there was no more to be said.  He brought to my recollection a Scotch Highlander, a man of learning too, and who had seen the world, attesting, and at the same time giving his reasons for the authenticity of Fingal:—­’I have heard all that poem when I was young.’—­’Have you, Sir?  Pray what have you heard?’—­’I have heard Ossian, Oscar, and every one of them.’

Johnson said of Chatterton, ’This is the most extraordinary young man that has encountered my knowledge.  It is wonderful how the whelp has written such things.’

We were by no means pleased with our inn at Bristol.  ’Let us see now, (said I,) how we should describe it.’  Johnson was ready with his raillery.  ’Describe it, Sir?—­Why, it was so bad that Boswell wished to be in Scotland!’

After Dr. Johnson’s return to London, I was several times with him at his house, where I occasionally slept, in the room that had been assigned to me.  I dined with him at Dr. Taylor’s, at General Oglethorpe’s, and at General Paoli’s.  To avoid a tedious minuteness, I shall group together what I have preserved of his conversation during this period also, without specifying each scene where it passed, except one, which will be found so remarkable as certainly to deserve a very particular relation.

’Garrick (he observed,) does not play the part of Archer in The Beaux Stratagem well.  The gentleman should break out through the footman, which is not the case as he does it.’

’That man is never happy for the present is so true, that all his relief from unhappiness is only forgetting himself for a little while.  Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.’

’Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son, I think, might be made a very pretty book.  Take out the immorality, and it should be put into the hands of every young gentleman.  An elegant manner and easiness of behaviour are acquired gradually and imperceptibly.  No man can say “I’ll be genteel.”  There are ten genteel women for one genteel man, because they are more restrained.  A man without some degree of restraint is insufferable; but we are all less restrained than women.  Were a woman sitting in company to put out her legs before her as most men do, we should be tempted to kick them in.’