with a 'sensation of shame' at the resemblance which the night's entertainment bore to a 'debauch.' He had the strength of mind to overcome these misgivings, and even to give this little narrative, and defy any doubts which it might suggest as to his own dignity. There was nothing, he is anxious to make us understand, which would have shocked even that reverent admirer of the 'dixonary,' Miss Pinkerton of Chiswick Mall. For the most part, it must be admitted, Hawkins has such readers before his eyes, and Johnson is with him the great moralist and author of the Rambler, whom M. Taine found—no wonder—to be unreadable. From Hawkins taken alone, we might have dimly divined aspects of the Boswellian Johnson; but, on the whole, the lexicographer would have been little more than a fine specimen of the old denizens of Grub Street. His discourse, says Hawkins, was of the 'didactic kind, replete with original sentiments expressed in the strongest and most correct terms.' Yet even Hawkins cannot quite damp the genuine fire in a few specimens which he has preserved.
Among the earlier friends we must reckon one incomparably superior person. Reynolds knew
