“Spottiswood[279] asked me what was the reason I had given up drinking wine. ‘Because,’ said I, ‘I never could drink it but to excess.’ Said he, ‘An excessive good reason.’”
Dining at Paoli’s,
28th April, 1778.
“When a man talks of his own faults, it is often owing to a consciousness that they cannot be concealed, and others will treat them more severely than he himself does. He thinks others will throw him down, so he had better lye down softly.”
London, April, 1778.
“I can more easily part with a good sum at once than with a number of small sums—with a hundred guineas rather than with two guineas at fifty different times; as one has less pain from having a tooth drawn whole than when it breaks and is pulled out in pieces.”
London, April, 1778.
“When Wilkes was borne on the shoulders of the unruly mob, Burke applied to him what Horace says of Pindar,—‘Fertur numeris legibus solutus.’”
Mr. Wilkes, London, April, 1778.
N.B.—“Dr. Johnson[280] thought this an admirable double pun; and he will seldom allow any vent to that species of witticism.”