' JOHNSON. 'Why,
Sir, the truth is, they both drive coaches and six; but Dryden's horses
are either galloping or stumbling: Pope's go at a steady even trot.' He
said of Goldsmith's Traveller, which had been published in my absence,
'There has not been so fine a poem since Pope's time.'
* 1766.
Talking of education, 'People have now a-days, (said he,) got a strange
opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see
that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the
lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures,
except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by
lectures.--You might teach making of shoes by lectures!'
At night I supped with him at the Mitre tavern, that we might renew our
social intimacy at the original place of meeting. But there was now a
considerable difference in his way of living. Having had an illness,
in which he was advised to leave off wine, he had, from that period,
continued to abstain from it, and drank only water, or lemonade.
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