ant or future event, may be called
_superstition_: but the correspondence of the fact or event with such an
impression on the fancy, though certainly very wonderful, _if proved_,
has no more connection with superstition, than magnetism or electricity.

After dinner, various topicks were discussed; but I recollect only one
particular. Dr. Johnson compared the different talents of Garrick and
Foote,[1072] as companions, and gave Garrick greatly the preference for
elegance, though he allowed Foote extraordinary powers of entertainment.
He said, 'Garrick is restrained by some principle; but Foote has the
advantage of an unlimited range. Garrick has some delicacy of feeling;
it is possible to put him out; you may get the better of him; but Foote
is the most incompressible fellow that I ever knew; when you have driven
him into a corner, and think you are sure of him, he runs through
between your legs, or jumps over your head, and makes his escape.'

Dr. Erskine[1073] and Mr. Robert Walker, two very respectable ministers
of Edinburgh, supped with us, as did the Reverend Dr. Webster.[1074] The
conversation turned on the Moravian missions, and on the Methodists. Dr.
Johnson observed in general, that missionaries were too sanguine in
their accounts of their success among savages, and that much of what
they tell is not to be believed. He owned that the Methodists had done
good; had spread religious impressions among the vulgar part of
mankind:[1075] but, he said, they had great bitterness against other
Christians, and that he never could get a Methodist to explain in what
he excelled others; that it always ended in the indispensible necessity
of hearing one of their preachers.[1076]

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11.

Principal Robertson came to us as we sat at breakfast, he advanced to
Dr. Johnson, repeating a line of Virgil, which I forget. I
suppose, either

Post varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum[1077]--

or

--multum ille et terris jactatus, et alto[1078].

Every body had accosted us with some studied compliment on our return.
Dr. Johnson said, 'I am really ashamed of the congratulations which we
receive. We are addressed as if we had made a voyage to Nova Zembla, and
suffered five persecutions in Japan[1079].' And he afterwards remarked,
that, 'to see a man come up with a formal air and a Latin line, when we
had no fatigue and no danger, was provoking[1080].' I told him, he was
not sensible of the danger, h