On Wednesday, the 21st July, Johnson supped at Boswell’s chambers, when were also present Mr. George Dempster, M.P., and the host’s paternal uncle, Dr. John Boswell, from Edinburgh. The occasion was one of the most memorable in the course of Boswell’s intercourse with his illustrious associate. Dr. Boswell entertained loose notions of religion, and Mr. Dempster was a disciple of David Hume. Dempster made a violent attack on Christianity, repeating the arguments of Rousseau, and quoting approvingly the sentiments of Hume and Gibbon. Dr. Boswell preserved a general silence, but was disposed to smile approvingly at Dempster’s sallies. In the society of his new acquaintance, Dr. Johnson was appalled to find a bold upholder of infidel sentiments, and his indignation was proportionate. He assailed Dempster with much severity, exposing the sophistry of his school. Boswell took notes of the conversation, doubtless intending to utilize what he had written. Next morning he hastened to Dr. Johnson’s chambers to express disapproval of Dempster’s sentiments. Dr. Johnson answered, “I have not met with any man for a long time who has given me such general displeasure. He is totally unfixed in his principles, and wants to puzzle other people.” This utterance is presented by Boswell in Dr. Johnson’s memoirs with the prefatory remark, “Of a gentleman who was mentioned he said,” &c. Boswell became very intimate with Mr. Dempster, and so erased from his journal all memorials of the evening’s conversation. Not very creditably he affirms, in Johnson’s Life, that the evening was wholly occupied “in the discussion of social and political questions.” But the truth, which Boswell sought to suppress, reaches us in his own words from two different channels. To Mr. Temple, on the 23rd of July, he wrote thus:— “On Wednesday evening, Mr. Johnson, Dempster, and my uncle Dr. Boswell, supped with me at my chambers. I had prodigious satisfaction to find Dempster’s sophistry (which he has learned from Hume and Rousseau) vanquished by the solid sense and vigorous reasoning of Johnson. It was a very fertile evening, and _my journal is stored with its fruits_. Dempster was as happy as a vanquished argumentator could he; and the honest Doctor was cheerful and conversible and highly entertained.” On the same day Boswell communicated with Sir David Dalrymple in these words:—