He said he would go to the Hebrides with me, when I returned from my travels, unless some very good companion should offer when I was absent, which he did not think probable; adding, ’There are few people to whom I take so much to as you.’  And when I talked of my leaving England, he said with a very affectionate air, ’My dear Boswell, I should be very unhappy at parting, did I think we were not to meet again.’  I cannot too often remind my readers, that although such instances of his kindness are doubtless very flattering to me; yet I hope my recording them will be ascribed to a better motive than to vanity; for they afford unquestionable evidence of his tenderness and complacency, which some, while they were forced to acknowledge his great powers, have been so strenuous to deny.

He maintained that a boy at school was the happiest of human beings.  I supported a different opinion, from which I have never yet varied, that a man is happier; and I enlarged upon the anxiety and sufferings which are endured at school.  Johnson.  ’Ah!  Sir, a boy’s being flogged is not so severe as a man’s having the hiss of the world against him.’

On Tuesday, July 26, I found Mr. Johnson alone.  It was a very wet day, and I again complained of the disagreeable effects of such weather.  Johnson.  ’Sir, this is all imagination, which physicians encourage; for man lives in air, as a fish lives in water; so that if the atmosphere press heavy from above, there is an equal resistance from below.  To be sure, bad weather is hard upon people who are obliged to be abroad; and men cannot labour so well in the open air in bad weather, as in good:  but, Sir, a smith or a taylor, whose work is within doors, will surely do as much in rainy weather, as in fair.  Some very delicate frames, indeed, may be affected by wet weather; but not common constitutions.’

We talked of the education of children; and I asked him what he thought was best to teach them first.  Johnson.  ’Sir, it is no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you shall put into your breeches first.  Sir, you may stand disputing which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech is bare.  Sir, while you are considering which of two things you should teach your child first, another boy has learnt them both.’

On Thursday, July 28, we again supped in private at the Turk’s Head coffee-house.  Johnson.  ’Swift has a higher reputation than he deserves.  His excellence is strong sense; for his humour, though very well, is not remarkably good.  I doubt whether The Tale of a Tub be his; for he never owned it, and it is much above his usual manner.’

’Thomson, I think, had as much of the poet about him as most writers.  Every thing appeared to him through the medium of his favourite pursuit.  He could not have viewed those two candles burning but with a poetical eye.’