does cure himself[219]. 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. I may do
it by going into a drawing-room without my shoes. You remember the
gentleman in _The Spectator_, who had a commission of lunacy taken out
against him for his extreme singularity, such as never wearing a wig,
but a night-cap. Now, Sir, abstractedly, the night-cap was best; but,
relatively, the advantage was overbalanced by his making the boys run
after him[220].'

Talking of a London life, he said, 'The happiness of London is not to be
conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say, there
is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from
where we now sit, than in all the rest of the kingdom.' BOSWELL. 'The
only disadvantage is the great distance at which people live from one
another.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; but that is occasioned by the largeness of
it, which is the cause of all the other advantages.' BOSWELL. 'Sometimes
I have been in the humour of wishing to retire to a desart.' JOHNSON.
'Sir, you have desart enough in Scotland.'

Although I had promised myself a great deal of instructive conversation
with him on the conduct of the married state, of which I had then a near
prospect, he did not say much upon that topick. Mr. Seward[221] heard him
once say, that 'a man has a very bad chance for happiness in that state,
unless he marries a woman of very strong and fixed principles of
religion.' He maintained to me, contrary to the common notion, that a
woman would not be the worse wife for being learned[222]; in which, from
all that I have observed of Artemisias[223], I humbly differed from him.
That a woman should be sensible and well informed, I allow to be a great
advantage; and think that Sir Thomas Overbury[224], in his rude