He talked very contemptuously of Churchill’s poetry, observing, that ’it had a temporary currency, only from its audacity of abuse, and being filled with living names, and that it would sink into oblivion.’  I ventured to hint that he was not quite a fair judge, as Churchill had attacked him violently.  Johnson.  ’Nay, Sir, I am a very fair judge.  He did not attack me violently till he found I did not like his poetry; and his attack on me shall not prevent me from continuing to say what I think of him, from an apprehension that it may be ascribed to resentment.  No, Sir, I called the fellow a blockhead at first, and I will call him a blockhead still.  However, I will acknowledge that I have a better opinion of him now, than I once had; for he has shewn more fertility than I expected.  To be sure, he is a tree that cannot produce good fruit:  he only bears crabs.  But, Sir, a tree that produces a great many crabs is better than a tree which produces only a few.’

Let me here apologize for the imperfect manner in which I am obliged to exhibit Johnson’s conversation at this period.  In the early part of my acquaintance with him, I was so wrapt in admiration of his extraordinary colloquial talents, and so little accustomed to his peculiar mode of expression, that I found it extremely difficult to recollect and record his conversation with its genuine vigour and vivacity.  In progress of time, when my mind was, as it were, strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian oether, I could, with much more facility and exactness, carry in my memory and commit to paper the exuberant variety of his wisdom and wit.

At this time miss Williams, as she was then called, though she did not reside with him in the Temple under his roof, but had lodgings in Bolt-court, Fleet-street, had so much of his attention, that he every night drank tea with her before he went home, however late it might be, and she always sat up for him.  This, it may be fairly conjectured, was not alone a proof of his regard for her, but of his own unwillingness to go into solitude, before that unseasonable hour at which he had habituated himself to expect the oblivion of repose.  Dr. Goldsmith, being a privileged man, went with him this night, strutting away, and calling to me with an air of superiority, like that of an esoterick over an exoterick disciple of a sage of antiquity, ‘I go to Miss Williams.’  I confess, I then envied him this mighty privilege, of which he seemed so proud; but it was not long before I obtained the same mark of distinction.

On Tuesday the 5th of July, I again visited Johnson.

Talking of London, he observed, ’Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts.  It is not in the showy evolutions of buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations which are crouded together, that the wonderful immensity of London consists.’