'His social propensities,' says Sir J. Prior, 'were well known ... he opens his mind so freely that we discover much of what is passing there, even when the disclosure is not meant.'[38] Boswell, indeed, talked very readily even upon the most serious subjects. About morals and religion he was continually questioning Dr. Johnson, and most of all about what to the other was a peculiarly sacred and awful thing, the fear of death. The topics were introduced apparently without any particular reason or fitness, but just as it occurred to Boswell that he might elicit some response from Johnson upon questions about which it was essential to his purpose that he should hear the doctor's views: and they were introduced too not merely in private converse but when a number of people were present. It seems clear that Boswell was sometimes very tactless in leading Johnson to talk; he did not understand that not every company nor every occasion is suitable for the discussion of the most serious matters. He had, too, an unfortunate habit of saying things which were extremely injudicious. He did not even understand altogether what was likely to annoy Dr. Johnson--as on the occasion when he referred to him in company by the name 'Gargantua,' which Johnson had spoken of as having been applied to himself, or when he made what must have been an obvious reference to Johnson's curious clothes: 'Would not _you_, sir, be the better for velvet embroidery?' These remarks were made, it is evident, without any malevolent intention. It would seem that even when he meant to be rude he did not realise all the harm he was doing: Hume was with some justice annoyed when Boswell quoted the phrase of Temple, 'their infidel pensioner, Hume';[39] and it was introduced just as a child might say in some personal argument, 'I know what someone said of _you_'; and Foote can never have felt much friendship for Johnson after he heard that the latter had compared his infidelity to that of a dog.[40] The company in both cases may have been glad to see Boswell defend his friend, but they must have thought him a considerable fool and hardly a harmless one. Nor was it merely from his disregard of what was appropriate that his conversation might be thought foolish, but rather because a man who is very ready to talk of his most intimate thoughts and feelings is usually supposed to be a fool. Boswell certainly had far more candour than most men, and he had also a far greater curiosity and interest in mankind, which made him ready to talk like a child of things about which many men prefer to be silent. But it would seem, too, that though far from incapable of feeling deep emotion he was unaffected where most of us would be touched. 'He was a boy longer than others,' and this perhaps is the explanation. [Footnote 1: _Letters to Temple_, pp. 146-7.] [Footnote 2: _Letters to Temple_, p. 157.] [Footnote 3: _Letters to Temple_, p. 250.]