"
Nay, Dryden in his poem on the Royal Society, has these lines:
"Then we upon our globe's last verge shall go,
And see the ocean leaning on the sky;
From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,
And on the lunar world securely pry."'
Much pleasant conversation passed, which Johnson relished with great
good humour. But his conversation alone, or what led to it, or was
interwoven with it, is the business of this work.
On Saturday, May 1, we dined by ourselves at our old rendezvous, the
Mitre tavern. He was placid, but not much disposed to talk. He observed
that 'The Irish mix better with the English than the Scotch do; their
language is nearer to English; as a proof of which, they succeed very
well as players, which Scotchmen do not. Then, Sir, they have not that
extreme nationality which we find in the Scotch. I will do you,
Boswell, the justice to say, that you are the most UNSCOTTIFIED of your
countrymen. You are almost the only instance of a Scotchman that I
have known, who did not at every other sentence bring in some other
Scotchman.
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