Now, Sir, there are people whom one
should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.' He
certainly was vain of the society of ladies, and could make himself very
agreeable to them, when he chose it; Sir Joshua Reynolds agreed with
me that he could. Mr. Gibbon, with his usual sneer, controverted it,
perhaps in resentment of Johnson's having talked with some disgust of
his ugliness, which one would think a PHILOSOPHER would not mind.
Dean Marlay wittily observed, 'A lady may be vain, when she can turn a
wolf-dog into a lap-dog.'
His notion of the duty of a member of Parliament, sitting upon an
election-committee, was very high; and when he was told of a gentleman
upon one of those committees, who read the newspapers part of the time,
and slept the rest, while the merits of a vote were examined by the
counsel; and as an excuse, when challenged by the chairman for
such behaviour, bluntly answered, 'I had made up my mind upon that
case.'--Johnson, with an indignant contempt, said, 'If he was such a
rogue as to make up his mind upon a case without hearing it, he should
not have been such a fool as to tell it.
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