ide the Temple's gate in
Fleet Street, and there, at a late hour of the night of May 10th, 1773,
observes a gigantic old man laughing wildly, but having no one with him
to share and aggrandise his emotion. Not that he is alone; but the young
man beside him laughs only in politeness and is inwardly puzzled, even
shocked. Boswell has a keen, an exquisitely keen, scent for comedy,
for the fun that is latent in fine shades of character; but imaginative
burlesque, anything that borders on lovely nonsense, he was not formed
to savour. All the more does one revel in his account of what led up
to the moment when Johnson 'to support himself, laid hold of one of the
posts at the side of the foot pavement, and sent forth peals so loud
that in the silence of the night his voice seemed to resound from Temple
Bar to Fleet Ditch.'

No evening ever had an unlikelier ending. The omens were all for gloom.
Johnson had gone to dine at General Paoli's, but was so ill that he
had to leave before the meal was over. Later he managed to go to Mr.
Chambers' rooms in the Temple. 'He continued to be very ill' there, but
gradually felt better, and 'talked with a noble enthusiasm of keeping
up the representation of respectable families,' and was great on 'the
dignity and propriety of male succession.' Among his listeners, as it
happened, was a gentleman for whom Mr. Chambers had that day drawn up
a will devising his estate to his three sisters. The news of this might
have been expected to make Johnson violent in wrath. But no, for some
reason he grew violent only in laughter, and insisted thenceforth on
calling that gentleman The Testator and chaffing him without mercy. 'I
daresay he thinks he has done a mighty thing. He won't stay till he gets
home to his seat in the country, to produce this wonderful deed: he'll
call up the landlord of the first inn on the road; and after a suitable
preface upon mortality and the uncertainty of life, will tell him that
he should not delay in making his will; and Here, Sir, will he say,
is my will, which I have just made, with the assistance of one of the
ablest lawyers in the kingdom; and he will read it to him. He believes
he has made this will; but he did not make it; you, Chambers, made it
for him. I hope you have had more conscience than to make him say "being
of sound understanding!" ha, ha, ha! I hope he has left me a legacy. I'd
have his will turned into verse, like a ballad.' These flights annoyed
Mr. Cham