No man was a more attentive and nice observer of behaviour in those in whose company he happened to be, than Johnson; or, however strange it may seem to many, had a higher estimation of its refinements.  Lord Eliot informs me, that one day when Johnson and he were at dinner at a gentleman’s house in London, upon Lord Chesterfield’s Letters being mentioned, Johnson surprized the company by this sentence:  ’Every man of any education would rather be called a rascal, than accused of deficiency in the graces.’  Mr. Gibbon, who was present, turned to a lady who knew Johnson well, and lived much with him, and in his quaint manner, tapping his box, addressed her thus:  ’Don’t you think, Madam, (looking towards Johnson,) that among all your acquaintance, you could find one exception?’ The lady smiled, and seemed to acquiesce.

The uncommon vivacity of General Oglethorpe’s mind, and variety of knowledge, having sometimes made his conversation seem too desultory, Johnson observed, ‘Oglethorpe, Sir, never completes what he has to say.’

He on the same account made a similar remark on Patrick Lord Elibank:  ‘Sir, there is nothing conclusive in his talk.’

When I complained of having dined at a splendid table without hearing one sentence of conversation worthy of being remembered, he said, ’Sir, there seldom is any such conversation.’  Boswell.  ’Why then meet at table?’ Johnson.  ’Why, to eat and drink together, and to promote kindness; and, Sir, this is better done when there is no solid conversation; for when there is, people differ in opinion, and get into bad humour, or some of the company who are not capable of such conversation, are left out, and feel themselves uneasy.  It was for this reason, Sir Robert Walpole said, he always talked bawdy at his table, because in that all could join.’

Being irritated by hearing a gentleman* ask Mr. Levett a variety of questions concerning him, when he was sitting by, he broke out, ’Sir, you have but two topicks, yourself and me.  I am sick of both.’  ’A man, (said he,) should not talk of himself, nor much of any particular person.  He should take care not to be made a proverb; and, therefore, should avoid having any one topick of which people can say, “We shall hear him upon it.”  There was a Dr. Oldfield, who was always talking of the Duke of Marlborough.  He came into a coffee-house one day, and told that his Grace had spoken in the House of Lords for half an hour.  “Did he indeed speak for half an hour?” (said Belehier, the surgeon,)—­“Yes.”—­“And what did he say of Dr. Oldfield?”—­“Nothing”—­“Why then, Sir, he was very ungrateful; for Dr. Oldfield could not have spoken for a quarter of an hour, without saying something of him."’

     * Most likely Boswell himself.—­Hill.

I am now to record a very curious incident in Dr. Johnson’s Life, which fell under my own observation; of which pars magna fui, and which I am persuaded will, with the liberal-minded, be much to his credit.