ve had much fondness for a child
of my own.' MRS. THRALE. 'Nay, Sir, how can you talk so?' JOHNSON. 'At
least, I never wished to have a child.'

He talked of Lord Lyttelton's extreme anxiety as an authour; observing,
that 'he was thirty years in preparing his History, and that he employed
a man to point it for him; as if (laughing) another man could point his
sense better than himself.' Mr. Murphy said, he understood his history
was kept back several years for fear of Smollet. JOHNSON. 'This seems
strange to Murphy and me, who never felt that anxiety, but sent what we
wrote to the press, and let it take its chance.' MRS. THRALE. 'The time
has been, Sir, when you felt it.' JOHNSON. 'Why, really, Madam, I do not
recollect a time when that was the case.'

On Thursday, April 11, I dined with him at General Paoli's, in whose
house I now resided, and where I had ever afterwards the honour of being
entertained with the kindest attention as his constant guest, while I
was in London, till I had a house of my own there. I mentioned my having
that morning introduced to Mr. Garrick, Count Neni, a Flemish Nobleman
of great rank and fortune, to whom Garrick talked of Abel Drugger as A
SMALL PART; and related, with pleasant vanity, that a Frenchman who had
seen him in one of his low characters, exclaimed, 'Comment! je ne le
crois pas. Ce n'est pas Monsieur Garrick, ce Grand Homme!' Garrick
added, with an appearance of grave recollection, 'If I were to begin
life again, I think I should not play those low characters.' Upon which
I observed, 'Sir, you would be in the wrong; for your great excellence
is your variety of playing, your representing so well, characters so
very different.' JOHNSON. 'Garrick, Sir, was not in earnest in what
he said; for, to be sure, his peculiar excellence is his variety; and,
perhaps, there is not any one character which has not been as well acted
by somebody else, as he could do it.' BOSWELL. 'Why then, Sir, did he
talk so?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, to make you answer as you did.' BOSWELL.
'I don't know, Sir; he seemed to dip deep into his mind for the
reflection.' JOHNSON. 'He had not far to dip, Sir: he said the same
thing, probably, twenty times before.'

Of a nobleman raised at a very early period to high office, he
said, 'His parts, Sir, are pretty well for a Lord; but would not be
distinguished in a man who had nothing else but his parts.'

A journey to Italy was still in his thoughts. He said, 'A man wh