ns, who was opposed to it. "I am," said he, "for the King
against Fox; but I am for Fox against Pitt. The King is my master; but I
do not know Pitt; and Fox is my friend;" and to Burke, when he was a
candidate for a seat in the new Parliament, he wished, as he told him
with a smile, "all the success that an honest man could wish him." Even
towards Wilkes his asperity was softened down into good humour by their
meeting together over a plentiful table at the house of Dilly the
bookseller.

When he had offended any by contradiction or rudeness, it was seldom
long before he sought to be reconciled and forgiven. But though his
private enmities were easily appeased, yet where he considered the cause
of truth to be concerned, his resentment was vehement and unrelenting.
That imposture, particularly, which he with good reason supposed
Macpherson to have practised on the world with respect to the poems of
Ossian, provoked him to vengeance, such as the occasion seemed hardly to
demand.

Of his dry pleasantry in conversation there are many instances recorded.
When one of his acquaintances had introduced him to his brother, at the
same time telling him that he would find him become very agreeable after
he had been some time in his company, he replied, "Sir, I can wait." To
a stupid justice of the peace, who had wearied him with a long account
of his having caused four convicts to be condemned to transportation, he
answered, "I heartily wish I were a fifth;" a repartee that calls to our
mind Horace's answer to the impertinent fellow:

Omnes composui; Felices! mine ego resto.

A physician endeavouring to bring to his recollection that he had been
in his company once before, mentioned among other circumstances his
having that day worn so fine a coat, that it could not but have
attracted his notice. "Sir," said Johnson, "had you been dipped in
Pactolus, I should not have noticed you." He could on occasion be more
polite and complimentary. When Mrs. Siddons, with whom, in a letter to
Mrs. Thrale, he expressed himself highly pleased, paid him a visit,
there happened not to be any chair ready for her. "Madam," said he, "you
who so often occasion the want of seats to others will the more readily
excuse the want of one yourself."

His scholarship was rather various than accurate or profound. Yet Dr.
Burney, the younger, supposed him capable of giving a Greek word for
almost every English one. Romances were always a favourite kind of