Chapter 11

portrait painted by Mr. Northcote, I had not been ten minutes alone with him before I asked him why there were holes in his carpet.' Dryden, Pope, Reynolds, Northcote, Ruskin, so runs the chain of genius, with only one weak link in it.

[1114] At one of these seats Dr. Amyat, Physician in London, told me he happened to meet him. In order to amuse him till dinner should be ready, he was taken out to walk in the garden. The master of the house, thinking it proper to introduce something scientifick into the conversation, addressed him thus: 'Are you a botanist, Dr. Johnson:' 'No, Sir, (answered Johnson,) I am not a botanist; and, (alluding no doubt, to his near sightedness) should I wish to become a botanist, I must first turn myself into a reptile.' BOSWELL.

[1115] Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. 285) says:--'The roughness of the language used on board a man of war, where he passed a week on a visit to Captain Knight, disgusted him terribly. He asked an officer what some place was called, and received for answer that it was where the loplolly man kept his loplolly; a reply he considered as disrespectful, gross and ignorant.' Mr. Croker says that Captain Knight of the _Belleisle_ lay for a couple of months in 1762 in Plymouth Sound. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 480. It seems unlikely that Johnson passed a whole week on ship-board. _Loplolly_, or _Loblolly_, is explained in _Roderick Random_, chap.