With little exception, the conversation was purely literary: the characteristics of the Oxford and Cambridge libraries; the publications of the University presses; the labours of Johnson himself; the controversy between Warburton and Lowth; Lord Lyttelton as a historian; the merits of the universal Dr. Hill; the quality of home and foreign periodicals; and so on. When Lyttelton was named, Johnson said he had blamed Henry II. over much. The king thought historians seldom did such things by halves. ‘No, Sir,’ said Johnson, ‘not to kings;’ but he added: ‘That for those who spoke worse of kings than they deserved, he could find no excuse; but he could more easily conceive how some might speak better of them than they deserved, without any ill intention; for as kings had much in their power to give, those who were favoured by them would frequently, from gratitude, exaggerate their praises; and as this proceeded from a good motive, it was certainly excusable――as far as error was excusable.’ [Sidenote: _JOHNSON, ON GEORGE III._] When Johnson submitted that he himself had done his part as a writer, ‘I should have thought so, too,’ said the king, ‘if you had not written so well.’ Johnson spoke of this to Boswell in these words: ‘No man could have paid a handsomer compliment, and it was fit for a king to pay: it was decisive.’ On another occasion, Johnson being asked if he made any reply to this high compliment, he answered: ‘No, Sir. When the king had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to bandy civilities with my sovereign.’ Later still he said, ‘I find it does a man good to be talked to by his sovereign;’ and for some time subsequently he continued to speak of the king as he had spoken of him to Mr. Barnard, after the interview: ‘Sir, they may talk of the king as they will, but he is the finest gentleman I have ever seen;’ and later, ‘still harping on my daughter,’ he said at Langton’s: ‘Sir, his manners are those of as fine a gentleman as we may suppose Louis XIV. or Charles II.’ Assuredly, the fine-gentleman manners of either king were not now to be found in the Charles Edward who aspired to the throne which Charles II. had occupied. A passage in an autograph letter, addressed in May, 1767, by Cardinal York to a friend of the family in London (where it was offered for sale three or four years ago), shows the condition of the prince, and shadows forth the lingering hopes of the family. The Cardinal, after stating that the Pope had presented Charles Edward with ‘a pair of beads,’ adds: ‘They are of such a kind as are _only given to Sovrains_, and could wee but gett the better of the nasty Bottle, which every now and then comes on by spurts, I would hope a greet deal of ouer gaining a good deal _as to other things_.’ [Sidenote: _JOHNSON’S PENSION OPPOSED._]