This ludicrous exhibition was much talked of and laughed at. To heighten the absurdity, his Liberal friends affected to be shocked at his want of principle, in singing praises of the 'Grocer,' whom he had been heard to abuse. They were enchanted to find him rise to the bait, and thus vindicate himself: 'Pray let them know that I am vain of a hasty composition which has procured me large draughts of the popular applause in which I delight. Let me add that there was certainly no servility on my part, for I publicly declared in Guildhall, between the encores, "that this same Grocer had treated me arrogantly and ungratefully, but that, from his great merit as a minister, I was compelled to support him." The time will come when I shall have a riper opportunity to show, that in one instance, at least, the man has wanted wisdom.' He goes on to explain that Boswell gained a good deal of notoriety from the escapade, which was alluded to in a popular satirical poem of the time. It is easy indeed to understand the motives of Boswell. His childish and unrestrained love of merriment, his insatiable desire to be the wag and the buffoon, enabled him to give vent in the most mirthful fashion to his passion for self-advertisement, to explain how he had been honoured by the attention of kings and how he intended to have an introduction to the great Minister; and with all this he retained a certain fundamental honesty about himself, so that he was compelled to exclaim between the encores 'that this same Minister had treated me arrogantly and ungratefully.' He understood so little what was the opinion of the company about him that he seems to have believed that he was recommending himself to a patron, and he was so vain that he was undoubtedly proud of what must have been an absurd composition. Boswell indeed was very fond of writing humorous verse.[35] The instinct in him was the natural result of his animal spirits; the need to be laughing, which he felt so strongly at most times when he was not depressed and melancholy, fixed upon the smallest objects as suitable for his wit, and he was satisfied only by some form of expression. The reason that he collected in his commonplace-book a number of 'good things,' as he would call them, is not so much that he was proud of his own sayings (for those of others are also treasured) or that he wished to preserve them for posterity, though both these feelings were present, as that his huge enjoyment of anything witty must be recorded to be satisfied.