I regret that any of them escaped
my retention and diligence. I found, from experience, that to collect
my friend's conversation so as to exhibit it with any degree of its
original flavour, it was necessary to write it down without delay. To
record his sayings, after some distance of time, was like preserving or
pickling long-kept and faded fruits, or other vegetables, which, when in
that state, have little or nothing of their taste when fresh.
I shall present my readers with a series of what I gathered this evening
from the Johnsonian garden.
'Did we not hear so much said of Jack Wilkes, we should think more
highly of his conversation. Jack has great variety of talk, Jack is a
scholar, and Jack has the manners of a gentleman. But after hearing his
name sounded from pole to pole, as the phoenix of convivial felicity, we
are disappointed in his company. He has always been AT ME: but I would
do Jack a kindness, rather than not. The contest is now over.'
'Colley Cibber once consulted me as to one of his birthday Odes, a long
time before it was wanted.
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