d is totally obliterated from my mind; but I remember that
he became very warm and intemperate in his expressions; upon which
Johnson rose, and quietly walked away. When he had retired, his
antagonist took his revenge, as he thought, by saying, 'He has a most
ungainly figure, and an affectation of pomposity, unworthy of a man of
genius.'

Johnson had not observed that I was in the room. I followed him,
however, and he agreed to meet me in the evening at the Mitre. I called
on him, and we went thither at nine. We had a good supper, and
port wine, of which he then sometimes drank a bottle. The orthodox
high-church sound of the Mitre,--the figure and manner of the
celebrated SAMUEL JOHNSON,--the extraordinary power and precision of his
conversation, and the pride arising from finding myself admitted as his
companion, produced a variety of sensations, and a pleasing elevation of
mind beyond what I had ever before experienced. I find in my journal the
following minute of our conversation, which, though it will give but a
very faint notion of what passed, is in some degree a valuable record;
and it will be curious in this view, as shewing how habitual to his mind
were some opinions which appear in his works.

'Colley Cibber, Sir, was by no means a blockhead; but by arrogating to
himself too much, he was in danger of losing that degree of estimation
to which he was entitled. His friends gave out that he INTENDED his
birth-day Odes should be bad: but that was not the case, Sir; for he
kept them many months by him, and a few years before he died he shewed
me one of them, with great solicitude to render it as perfect as might
be, and I made some corrections, to which he was not very willing to
submit. I remember the following couplet in allusion to the King and
himself:

"Perch'd on the eagle's soaring wing,
The lowly linnet loves to sing."

Sir, he had heard something of the fabulous tale of the wren sitting
upon the eagle's wing, and he had applied it to a linnet. Cibber's
familiar style, however, was better than that which Whitehead has
assumed. GRAND nonsense is insupportable. Whitehead is but a little man
to inscribe verses to players.

'Sir, I do not think Gray a first-rate poet. He has not a bold
imagination, nor much command of words. The obscurity in which he has
involved himself will not persuade us that he is sublime. His Elegy in
a Church-yard has a happy selection of images, but I don't like what are