his should excite ridicule, when he did not intend it: he therefore
resolved to assume and exercise despotic power, glanced sternly
around, and called out in a strong tone, 'Where's the merriment?'
Then collecting himself, and looking awful, to make us feel how he
could impose restraint, and as it were searching his mind for a still
more ludicrous word, he slowly pronounced, 'I say the _woman_ was
_fundamentally_ sensible;' as if he had said, Hear this now, and
laugh if you dare. We all sat composed as at a funeral."

This resembles the influence exercised by the "great commoner" over
the House of Commons. An instance being mentioned of his throwing an
adversary into irretrievable confusion by an arrogant expression of
contempt, the late Mr. Charles Butler asked the relator, an
eye-witness, whether the House did not laugh at the ridiculous figure
of the poor member. "No, Sir," was the reply, "we were too much awed
to laugh."

It was a marked feature in Johnson's character that he was fond of
female society; so fond, indeed, that on coming to London he was
obliged to be on his guard against the temptations to which it
exposed him. He left off attending the Green Room, telling Grarrick,
"I'll come no more behind your scenes, Davy; for the silk stockings
and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities."

The proneness of his imagination to wander in this forbidden field is
unwittingly betrayed by his remarking at Sky, in support of the
doctrine that animal substances are less cleanly than vegetable: "I
have _often_ thought that, if I kept a seraglio, the ladies should
all wear linen gowns, or cotton, I mean stuffs made of vegetable
substances. I would have no silks: you cannot tell when it is clean: