strength of our friend's affection.

The evening ended by Johnson accepting a commission to write to a friend
who had given to the Club a hogshead of claret, and to request another,
with "a happy ambiguity of expression," in the hopes that it might also
be a present.

Some days afterwards, another conversation took place, which has a
certain celebrity in Boswellian literature. The scene was at Dilly's,
and the guests included Miss Seward and Mrs. Knowles, a well-known
Quaker Lady. Before dinner Johnson seized upon a book which he kept in
his lap during dinner, wrapped up in the table-cloth. His attention was
not distracted from the various business of the hour, but he hit upon a
topic which happily combined the two appropriate veins of thought. He
boasted that he would write a cookery-book upon philosophical
principles; and declared in opposition to Miss Seward that such a task
was beyond the sphere of woman. Perhaps this led to a discussion upon
the privileges of men, in which Johnson put down Mrs. Knowles, who had
some hankering for women's rights, by the Shakspearian maxim that if two
men ride on a horse, one must ride behind. Driven from her position in
this world, poor Mrs. Knowles hoped that sexes might be equal in the
next. Boswell reproved her by the remark already quoted, that men might
as well expect to be equal to angels. He enforces this view by an
illustration suggested by the "Rev. Mr. Brown of Utrecht," who had
observed that a great or small glass might be equally full, though not
holding equal quantities. Mr. Brown intended this for a confutation of
Hume, who has said that a little Miss, dressed for a ball, may be as
happy as an orator who has won some triumphant success.[1]

[Footnote 1: Boswell remarks as a curious coincidence that the same
illustration had been used by a Dr. King, a dissenting minister.
Doubtless it has been used often enough. For one instance see _Donne's
Sermons_ (Alford's Edition), vol. i., p. 5.]

The conversation thus took a theological turn, and Mrs. Knowles was
fortunate enough to win Johnson's high approval. He defended a doctrine
maintained by Soame Jenyns, that friendship is a Christian virtue. Mrs.
Knowles remarked that Jesus had twelve disciples, but there was _one_
whom he _loved_. Johnson, "with eyes sparkling benignantly," exclaimed,
"Very well indeed, madam; you have said very well!"

So far all had gone smoothly; but here, for some inexplicable reason,
Johnson b