A man who does so never can be pleasing. The man who
talks to unburthen his mind is the man to delight you. An eminent
friend[699] of ours is not so agreeable as the variety of his knowledge
would otherwise make him, because he talks partly from ostentation.'
Soon after our arrival at Thrale's, I heard one of the maids calling
eagerly on another, to go to Dr. Johnson. I wondered what this could
mean. I afterwards learnt, that it was to give her a Bible, which he had
brought from London as a present to her.
He was for a considerable time occupied in reading _Memoires de
Fontenelle_, leaning and swinging upon the low gate into the court,
without his hat.
I looked into Lord Kames's _Sketches of the History of Man_; and
mentioned to Dr. Johnson his censure of Charles the Fifth, for
celebrating his funeral obsequies in his life-time, which, I told him, I
had been used to think a solemn and affecting act[700]. JOHNSON. 'Why,
Sir, a man may dispose his mind to think so of that act of Charles; but
it is so liable to ridicule, that if one man out of ten thousand laughs
at it, he'll make the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine
laugh too.
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