'
I am aware that many of my readers may censure my want of taste. Let
me, however, shelter myself under the authority of a very fashionable
Baronet in the brilliant world, who, on his attention being called to
the fragrance of a May evening in the country, observed, 'This may be
very well; but, for my part, I prefer the smell of a flambeau at the
playhouse.'
We staid so long at Greenwich, that our sail up the river, in our return
to London, was by no means so pleasant as in the morning; for the night
air was so cold that it made me shiver. I was the more sensible of it
from having sat up all the night before, recollecting and writing in
my journal what I thought worthy of preservation; an exertion, which,
during the first part of my acquaintance with Johnson, I frequently
made. I remember having sat up four nights in one week, without being
much incommoded in the day time.
Johnson, whose robust frame was not in the least affected by the cold,
scolded me, as if my shivering had been a paltry effeminacy, saying,
'Why do you shiver?' Sir William Scott, of the Commons, told me, that
when he complained of a head-ache in the post-chaise, as they were
travelling together to Scotland, Johnson treated him in the same manner:
'At your age, Sir, I had no head-ache.
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