Studious in ev'ry thing to please thy taste.
A curious fowl and sparagrass I chose;
(For I remember you were fond of those:)
Three shillings cost the first, the last seven groats;
Sullen you turn from both, and call for OATS.'
He laughed, and asked in whose name I would write it. I said in Mrs. Thrale's. He was angry. 'Sir, if you have any sense of decency or delicacy, you won't do that.' Boswell. 'Then let it be in Cole's, the landlord of the Mitre tavern, where we have so often sat together.' Johnson. 'Ay, that may do.'"
Again, at Inverary, when Johnson called for a gill of whiskey that he might know what makes a Scotchman happy, and Boswell proposed Mrs. Thrale as their toast, he would not have her drunk in whiskey. Peter Pindar has maliciously added to this reproof:—
"We supped most royally, were vastly frisky,
When Johnson ordered up a gill of whiskey.
Taking the glass, says I, 'Here's Mistress Thrale,'