After dinner, various topicks were discussed; but I recollect only one
particular. Dr. Johnson compared the different talents of Garrick and
Foote,[1072] as companions, and gave Garrick greatly the preference for
elegance, though he allowed Foote extraordinary powers of entertainment.
He said, 'Garrick is restrained by some principle; but Foote has the
advantage of an unlimited range. Garrick has some delicacy of feeling;
it is possible to put him out; you may get the better of him; but Foote
is the most incompressible fellow that I ever knew; when you have driven
him into a corner, and think you are sure of him, he runs through
between your legs, or jumps over your head, and makes his escape.'
Dr. Erskine[1073] and Mr. Robert Walker, two very respectable ministers
of Edinburgh, supped with us, as did the Reverend Dr. Webster.[1074] The
conversation turned on the Moravian missions, and on the Methodists. Dr.
Johnson observed in general, that missionaries were too sanguine in
their accounts of their success among savages, and that much of what
they tell is not to be believed. He owned that the Methodists had done
good; had spread religious impressions among the vulgar part of
mankind:[1075] but, he said, they had great bitterness against other
Christians, and that he never could get a Methodist to explain in what
he excelled others; that it always ended in the indispensible necessity
of hearing one of their preachers.
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