ar you play on the violoncello.
THAT should have been YOUR instrument.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I might as
well have played on the violoncello as another; but I should have done
nothing else. No, Sir; a man would never undertake great things, could
he be amused with small. I once tried knotting. Dempster's sister
undertook to teach me; but I could not learn it.' BOSWELL. 'So, Sir; it
will be related in pompous narrative, "Once for his amusement he
tried knotting; nor did this Hercules disdain the distaff."' JOHNSON.
'Knitting of stockings is a good amusement. As a freeman of Aberdeen I
should be a knitter of stockings.' He asked me to go down with him and
dine at Mr. Thrale's at Streatham, to which I agreed. I had lent him An
Account of Scotland, in 1702, written by a man of various enquiry, an
English chaplain to a regiment stationed there. JOHNSON. 'It is sad
stuff, Sir, miserably written, as books in general then were. There is
now an elegance of style universally diffused. No man now writes so ill
as Martin's Account of the Hebrides is written. A man could not write so
ill, if he should try. Set a merchant's clerk now to write, and he'll do
better.'

He talked to me with serious concern of a certain female friend's
'laxity of narration, and inattention to truth.'--'I am as much vexed
(said he,) at the ease with which she hears it mentioned to her, as at
the thing itself. I told her, "Madam, you are contented to hear every
day said to you, what the highest of mankind have died for, rather than
bear."--You know, Sir, the highest of mankind have died rather than
bear to be told they had uttered a falsehood. Do talk to her of it: I am
weary.'

BOSWELL. 'Was not Dr. John Campbell a very inaccurate man in his
narrative, Sir? He once told me, that he drank thirteen bottles of port
at a sitting.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I do not know that Campbell ever lied
with pen and ink; but you could not entirely depend on any thing he told
you in conversation: if there was fact mixed with it. However, I loved
Campbell: he was a solid orthodox man: he had a reverence for religion.
Though defective in practice, he was religious in principle; and he did
nothing grossly wrong that I have heard.'

Talking of drinking wine, he said, 'I did not leave off wine, because I
could not bear it; I have drunk three bottles of port without being the
worse for it. University College has witnessed this.' BOSWELL. 'Why,
then, Sir, did you leave it off?' JOHNSON.