Scotland, in 1702, written by a man of various enquiry, an English chaplain to a regiment stationed there.  Johnson.  ’It is sad stuff, Sir, miserably written, as books in general then were.  There is now an elegance of style universally diffused.  No man now writes so ill as Martin’s Account of the Hebrides is written.  A man could not write so ill, if he should try.  Set a merchant’s clerk now to write, and he’ll do better.’

He talked to me with serious concern of a certain female friend’s ’laxity of narration, and inattention to truth.’—­’I am as much vexed (said he,) at the ease with which she hears it mentioned to her, as at the thing itself.  I told her, “Madam, you are contented to hear every day said to you, what the highest of mankind have died for, rather than bear.”—­You know, Sir, the highest of mankind have died rather than bear to be told they had uttered a falsehood.  Do talk to her of it:  I am weary.’

Boswell.  ’Was not Dr. John Campbell a very inaccurate man in his narrative, Sir?  He once told me, that he drank thirteen bottles of port at a sitting.’  Johnson.  ’Why, Sir, I do not know that Campbell ever lied with pen and ink; but you could not entirely depend on any thing he told you in conversation:  if there was fact mixed with it.  However, I loved Campbell:  he was a solid orthodox man:  he had a reverence for religion.  Though defective in practice, he was religious in principle; and he did nothing grossly wrong that I have heard.’

Talking of drinking wine, he said, ’I did not leave off wine, because I could not bear it; I have drunk three bottles of port without being the worse for it.  University College has witnessed this.’  Boswell.  ’Why, then, Sir, did you leave it off?’ Johnson.  ’Why, Sir, because it is so much better for a man to be sure that he is never to be intoxicated, never to lose the power over himself.  I shall not begin to drink wine again, till I grow old, and want it.’  Boswell.  ’I think, Sir, you once said to me, that not to drink wine was a great deduction from life.’  Johnson.  ’It is a diminution of pleasure, to be sure; but I do not say a diminution of happiness.  There is more happiness in being rational.’  Boswell.  ’But if we could have pleasure always, should not we be happy?  The greatest part of men would compound for pleasure.’  Johnson.  ’Supposing we could have pleasure always, an intellectual man would not compound for it.  The greatest part of men would compound, because the greatest part of men are gross.’

I mentioned to him that I had become very weary in a company where I heard not a single intellectual sentence, except that ’a man who had been settled ten years in Minorca was become a much inferiour man to what he was in London, because a man’s mind grows narrow in a narrow place.’  Johnson.  ’A man’s mind grows narrow in a narrow place, whose mind is enlarged only because he has