" I never heard more of it, ha! ha! ha!'
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[750]; 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[751]--it delighted him, on a
review, to find that his conversation teemed with point and imagery[752].
I said to him, 'You were yesterday, Sir, in remarkably good humour[753]:
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.
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