“When Dempster was at Brussels, a young gentleman of Scotland was very bad. Dempster said that the surgeons poured mercury into him as if he had been the tube of a weather-glass.” * * * * * “Boswell told Mr. Samuel Johnson that Sir James Macdonald[136] said he had never seen him, but he had a great respect for him, though at the same time a great terror. ‘Were he to see me,’ said Mr. Johnson, ‘it would probably lessen both.’” * * * * * “Mr. Samuel Johnson told Boswell that Dr. Goldsmith when abroad used to dispute in the universities, and so get prize money, which carried him on in his travels. ‘Well,’ said Boswell, ‘that was indeed _disputing_ his _passage_ through Europe.’” * * * * * “Boswell was saying that Derrick was a miserable writer. ‘True,’ said Mr. Samuel Johnson,[137] ‘but it is to his being a writer that he owes anything he has. Sir, had not Derrick been a writer, he would have been sweeping the crosses in the streets, and asking halfpence from everybody that passed.’” * * * * * “A good-natured, stupid man, at Bath, wanted to appear a man of some consequence by talking often with Mr. Quin,[138] although he had nothing earthly to say more than ‘Your servant, Mr. Quin! I hope you are well.’ Quin bore with him for some time, but at last he lost patience, and one day when the gentleman came up to him with a ‘Mr. Quin, I hope you are well!’ Quin replied, ‘Yes, sir, I am very well, and intend to be so for six months to come; so, sir, till that time I desire you may not again ask me that question.’” MR. ROSE, at Utrecht. * * * * * “Mr. Samuel Johnson and Boswell slept in one room at Chichester. A moth flew round the candle for some time, and burnt itself to death. ‘That creature,’ said Mr. Johnson, ‘was its own tormentor, and I believe its name was Boswell.’”[139] * * * * * “Mr. Fordyce[140] said that a man of public character who falls into disgrace in England receives immediate punishment from the mob; and is a greater man than Orpheus, who only made live animals follow him, whereas the rogue makes dead cats come after him.” I was present. * * * * * “Baldie Robertson, a Scotch advocate, asked Boswell to accompany him to cheapen a couple of rooms of Lucky Rannie’s. She told him, ‘Sir, you shall just have them for a guinea a week, you furnishing coal and candle.’ Baldie, with much emotion, cried out, ‘But I tell you, woman, I have no coal and candle.’” * * * * * “Boswell said of Miss Stewart, of Blackhall,[141] ‘that more brilliant beauties came armed with darts and attacked men as foes, but Miss Stewart carried no weapons of destruction, and treated with them as with allies.’” * * * * *