eminent people, exclaims triumphantly in a letter to Temple (April 26,
1768), "I am really the great man now." Johnson and Hume had called upon
him on the same day, and Garrick, Franklin, and Oglethorpe also partook
of his "admirable dinners and good claret." "This," he says, with the
sense that he deserved his honours, "is enjoying the fruit of my
labours, and appearing like the friend of Paoli." Johnson in vain
expressed a wish that he would "empty his head of Corsica, which had
filled it too long." "Empty my head of Corsica! Empty it of honour,
empty it of friendship, empty it of piety!" exclaims the ardent youth.
The next year accordingly saw Boswell's appearance at the Stratford
Jubilee, where he paraded to the admiration of all beholders in a
costume described by himself (apparently) in a glowing article in the
_London Magazine_. "Is it wrong, sir," he took speedy opportunity of
inquiring from the oracle, "to affect singularity in order to make
people stare?" "Yes," replied Johnson, "if you do it by propagating
error, and indeed it is wrong in any way. There is in human nature a
general inclination to make people stare, and every wise man has himself
to cure of it, and does cure himself. If you wish to make people stare
by doing better than others, why make them stare till they stare their
eyes out. But consider how easy it is to make people stare by being
absurd"--a proposition which he proceeds to illustrate by examples
perhaps less telling than Boswell's recent performance.

The sage was less communicative on the question of marriage, though
Boswell had anticipated some "instructive conversation" upon that topic.
His sole remark was one from which Boswell "humbly differed." Johnson
maintained that a wife was not the worse for being learned. Boswell, on
the other hand, defined the proper degree of intelligence to be desired
in a female companion by some verses in which Sir Thomas Overbury says
that a wife should have some knowledge, and be "by nature wise, not