one glass of whisky to another glass of hot whisky makes the real "Hieland tartan toddy."

On one occasion Boswell, who the night before had had a carousal with the lairds unknown to JOHNSON, complained in the morning at breakfast that the wine which he had taken at dinner the night before had given him headache. “No, sir,” said JOHNSON, "it was not the wine that made your headache; but the sense that I put into it." Boswell in his own inimitable way said, “Sir, does sense make the headache?" "Yes, sir," answered JOHNSON, with a smile, "when one's head is not accustomed with it."

However, one evening at Inverary, after returning from a dinner party at the Duke of Argyll's, at whose table he was an abstainer, JOHNSON rang the bell and called for a gill of whisky, which he had never before tasted, and said to Boswell, "Sir, I shall see what it is that makes the Scotch happy." "Sir," said Boswell, "let me just take one drop, that I may say that I drank whisky in the Highlands with you." In his "Journey to the Western Isles" JOHNSON gives a graphic descrip

tion of whisky; but adds as to how it is distilled, "I had no means of inquiring, nor do I wish to improve the art of making poison pleasant."

Indeed, JOHNSON might with all truth be called a "teetotaler." He was an inveterate tea-drinker. Says Tom Tyers: "Come when you would, early or late, the tea table was sure to be spread." JOHNSON described himself as a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of the fascinating plant, whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evenings, with tea solaces the midnight, and with tea welcomes the morning.

When staying at Dunvegan Castle in Skye, although he would not drink Lady Macleod's wine, he drank with great avidity "oceans" of her tea. One evening on pouring out his seventeenth cup, her Ladyship quietly asked "if a small basin would not save him trouble, and be more agreeable?" The Doctor was indignant. "I wonder, madam," said he, roughly, "why all the ladies ask me such questions? It is to save yourselves

trouble, madam, and not me!" The lady continued her task in silence.

Although fond of dinner and tea, in later years he did not care for supper. "With supper," said he, "the table groans at night, the guests next morning."

He

At a party JOHNSON was the life and soul of it, and whether it was the breakfast, the dinner, the tea, or the supper table, the company invariably expected from him something original, witty, sententious, and seldom were they disappointed. would not, however, allow himself to be made a show of. He was asked one evening by a lady to a party, and he soon discovered that it was to make a "Zany" of him; "but," said he, “I punished her, for I drank twenty-five cups of her tea, and did not speak as many words the whole evening." Another evening he met at a club a very talkative and stupid individual. sir," said Mrs. Thrale, "did you do?” withdrew my attention, and thought of Tom Thumb." Nor did he care at convivial meetings to be a story-teller. One evening at the dinner

"And what,

"Madam, I

table of a certain noble lord he told a story. Shortly after, another lord came in, as the dinner was almost over. Said the noble host, to his friend who had just come in, "You have lost what was better than the dinner, the best story that I ever in my life heard. Doctor JOHNSON, will you kindly repeat it?" "Indeed, my lord," said JOHNSON, "I will not. I told the story for my own amusement." Nor did he like to be "over-fondled." At the first or second interview that Miss Hannah More had with JOHNSON, she flattered him so highly, that JOHNSON turned to her with a stern countenance, and with an angry voice said, "Madam, before you flatter a man grossly to his face you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth having." On another occasion at a party one evening, a young gentleman was laughing immoderately at some witty remark of his, he turned sharply round to him and said, "Sir, what is provoking your risibility? Have I said anything which you understand? If so, I beg the company's pardon." As a rule, however, at these convivial meetings he was communicative,

Like his sage in "Rasselas," "he spoke, and attention watched his lips: he reasoned, and conviction closed his periods.”

JOHNSON was the greatest conversationalist the world has ever known. He stands not only first, but has no second: "the competitors are not worth placing." Burke was brilliant, but unequal, sometimes even wearisome. He acknowledged JOHNSON'S supremacy in conversation by his famous remark: "It is enough for me that I ring the bell for him." Swift's conversation was full of eccentricities like his "will," in which he bequeaths his soul to God, his wig to his beadle, and his whole fortune to build lunatic asylums, as emblematic of what the world needs. Pope did not excel in conversation. JOHNSON says of him: "Traditional memory retains no sallies of raillery, or sentences of observation, nothing either pointed or solid, wise or merry; and that one apothegm only is recorded." Addison acknowledged his inferiority as a conversationalist in his famous retort: "I may have only ninepence in my pocket, but can draw for a thousand pounds.”