inquired what he had been doing to
divert himself, he showed me a calculation which I could scarce be made
to understand, so vast was the plan of it, and so very intricate were the
figures: no other, indeed, than that the national debt, computing it at
one hundred and eighty millions sterling, would, if converted into
silver, serve to make a meridian of that metal, I forgot how broad, for
the globe of the whole earth, the real _globe_. On a similar occasion I
asked him, knowing what subject he would like best to talk upon, how his
opinion stood towards the question between Paschal and Soame Jennings
about number and numeration? as the French philosopher observes that
infinity, though on all sides astonishing, appears most so when the idea
is connected with the idea of number; for the notion of infinite
number--and infinite number we know there is--stretches one's capacity
still more than the idea of infinite space. "Such a notion, indeed,"
adds he, "can scarcely find room in the human mind." Our English author,
on the other hand, exclaims, let no man give himself leave to talk about
infinite number, for infinite number is a contradiction in terms;
whatever is once numbered, we all see, cannot be infinite. "I think,"
said Mr. Johnson, after a pause, "we must settle the matter thus:
numeration is certainly infinite, for eternity might be employed in
adding unit to unit; but every number is in itself finite, as the
possibility of doubling it easily proves; besides, stop at what point you
will, you find yourself as far from infinitude as ever." These passages
I wrote down as soon as I had heard them, and repent that I did not take
the same method with a dissertation he made one other day that he was
very ill, concerning the peculiar properties of the number sixteen, which
I afterwards tried, but in vain, to make him repeat.

As ethics or figures, or metaphysical reasoning, was the sort of talk he
most delighted in, so no kind of conversation pleased him less, I think,
than when the subject was historical fact or general polity. "What shall
we learn from _that_ stuff?" said he. "Let us not fancy, like Swift,
that we are exalting a woman's character by telling how she

"'Could name the ancient heroes round,
Explain for what they were renowned,' etc."

I must not, however, lead my readers to suppose that he meant to reserve
such talk for men's company as a proof of pre-eminence. "He never," as
he expressed it