There is a pleasant passage connected with Dr. Johnson's visit to Plymouth, with his old friend Sir Joshua. He was much pleased with this jaunt and declared he had derived from it a great accession of new ideas . . . "The magnificence of the Navy the ship building and all its circumstances afforded him a grand subject of contemplation." He contemplated it in fact, as Mr. Pickwick contemplated Chatham and the Medway. The commissioner of the dockyard paid him the compliment, etc. The characteristic part, however, was that the Doctor entered enthusiastically into the local politics. "There was a new town rising up round the dockyard, as a rival to the old one, and knowing from the sagacity and just observation of human nature, that it is certain if a man hates at all, he will hate his next neighbour, he concluded that this new and rising town could but excite the envy and jealousy of the old. He therefore set himself resolutely on the side of the old town, the _established_ town in which he was. Considering it a kind of duty to _stand_ by it. He accordingly entered warmly into its interests, and upon every occasion talked of _the Dockers_ as "upstarts and aliens." As they wanted to be supplied with water from the old town, not having a drop themselves, Johnson affecting to entertain the passions of the place, was violent in opposition; and half laughing at himself for his pretended zeal, and where he had no concern, exclaimed: "No! I am against the _Dockers_; I am a Plymouth man. Rogues! let them die of thirst; they shall not have a drop. I _hate_ a Docker!"