On Friday, April 10, I found Johnson at home in the morning.  We resumed the conversation of yesterday.  He put me in mind of some of it which had escaped my memory, and enabled me to record it more perfectly than I otherwise could have done.  He was much pleased with my paying so great attention to his recommendation in 1763, the period when our acquaintance began, that I should keep a journal; and I could perceive he was secretly pleased to find so much of the fruit of his mind preserved; and as he had been used to imagine and say that he always laboured when he said a good thing—­it delighted him, on a review, to find that his conversation teemed with point and imagery.

I said to him, ’You were yesterday, Sir, in remarkably good humour:  but there was nothing to offend you, nothing to produce irritation or violence.  There was no bold offender.  There was not one capital conviction.  It was a maiden assize.  You had on your white gloves.’

He found fault with our friend Langton for having been too silent.  ’Sir, (said I,) you will recollect, that he very properly took up Sir Joshua for being glad that Charles Fox had praised Goldsmith’s Traveller, and you joined him.’  Johnson.  ’Yes, Sir, I knocked Fox on the head, without ceremony.  Reynolds is too much under Fox and Burke at present.  He is under the Fox star and the Irish constellation.  He is always under some planet.’  Boswell.  ‘There is no Fox star.’  Johnson.  ’But there is a dog star.’  Boswell.  ‘They say, indeed, a fox and a dog are the same animal.’

We dined together with Mr. Scott (now Sir William Scott his Majesty’s Advocate General,) at his chambers in the Temple, nobody else there.  The company being small, Johnson was not in such spirits as he had been the preceding day, and for a considerable time little was said.

Talking of fame, for which there is so great a desire, I observed how little there is of it in reality, compared with the other objects of human attention.  ’Let every man recollect, and he will be sensible how small a part of his time is employed in talking or thinking of Shakspeare, Voltaire, or any of the most celebrated men that have ever lived, or are now supposed to occupy the attention and admiration of the world.  Let this be extracted and compressed; into what a narrow space will it go!’ I then slily introduced Mr. Garrick’s fame, and his assuming the airs of a great man.  Johnson.  ’Sir, it is wonderful how little Garrick assumes.  No, Sir, Garrick fortunam reverenter habet.  Consider, Sir:  celebrated men, such as you have mentioned, have had their applause at a distance; but Garrick had it dashed in his face, sounded in his ears, and went home every night with the plaudits of a thousand in his cranium.  Then, Sir, Garrick did not find, but made his way to the tables, the levees, and almost the bed-chambers of the great.  Then, Sir, Garrick had under him a numerous body of