I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature.... I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson's breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend, smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back, and pulled him by the tail; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, 'Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this'; and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, 'but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.' We are pleased to find that Boswell has preserved for us the motive of Johnson, 'lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature.'[2] This is characteristic and interesting. But how deeply satisfying it is to discover that poor Hodge, as it appeared to Johnson, was 'out of countenance.' It is not, however, only because he observed so accurately what was obviously relevant, as the appearance of Johnson, or that he saw exactly what his motives were, that Boswell was a good observer; the range of his observation is equally remarkable. He observed everything; no detail was too insignificant for his attention. It was of vital importance for him to record (in the 'Tour to the Hebrides') 'I slept in the same room with Dr. Johnson. Each had a neat bed, with Tartan curtains, in an upper chamber,' and it is well that he did so; it is highly agreeable to imagine Johnson and Boswell in this situation. It is also interesting to know that Boswell, on the following morning, found upon the table in their room a slip of paper, on which Dr. Johnson had written these words: '_Quantum cedat virtutibus aurum_'; and that when Johnson turned his cup at Aberbrothick, where they drank tea, he muttered '_Claudite jam rivos pueri_.' And what an invaluable devotion it was that has preserved for us so small a fact as this--that the book which Johnson presented to a Highland lass was 'Cocker's Arithmetic'! These details are ours not by the fortune of a naturally endowed memory, but by the labour and patience and attention that trained a mind to a point of excellence. Miss Burney has left us an admirable account of Boswell's deportment when in the act of 'memorandising' Dr. Johnson's conversation, and from this we may see something of what it cost him to observe and record and remember: