Johnson said, 'Nay, Sir, Alexander the Great, marching in triumph into
Babylon, could not have desired to have had more said to him.'

[Page 250: Johnson the Idle Apprentice. A.D. 1752.]

Johnson was some time with Beauclerk at his house at Windsor, where he
was entertained with experiments in natural philosophy[737]. One Sunday,
when the weather was very fine, Beauclerk enticed him, insensibly, to
saunter about all the morning. They went into a church-yard, in the time
of divine service, and Johnson laid himself down at his ease upon one of
the tomb-stones. 'Now, Sir, (said Beauclerk) you are like Hogarth's Idle
Apprentice.' When Johnson got his pension, Beauclerk said to him, in the
humorous phrase of Falstaff, 'I hope you'll now purge and live cleanly
like a gentleman[738].'

[Page 251: A frisk with Beuclerk and Langton. AEtat 44.]

One night when Beauclerk and Langton had supped at a tavern in London,
and sat till about three in the morning, it came into their heads to go
and knock up Johnson, and see if they could prevail on him to join them
in a ramble. They rapped violently at the door of his chambers in the
Temple, till at last he appeared in his shirt, with his little black wig
on the top of his head, instead of a nightcap, and a poker in his hand,
imagining, probably, that some ruffians were coming to attack him. When
he discovered who they were, and was told their errand, he smiled, and
with great good humour agreed to their proposal: 'What, is it you, you
dogs! I'll have a frisk with you.' He was soon drest, and they sallied
forth together into Covent-Garden, where the greengrocers and fruiterers
were beginning to arrange their hampers, just come in from the country.
Johnson made some attempts to help them; but the honest gardeners stared