Note 42 — HOGARTH.
Reading edition
This observation extends no further than to his conversations among his intimates.
"Mr. Walpole once invited Gray the poet and Hogarth to dine with him; but what with the reserve of the one, and a want of colloquial talents in the other, he never passed a duller time than between these two representatives of tragedy and comedy, being obliged to rely entirely on his own efforts to support conversation."—Nichols' Anecdotes, p. 97.
Johnson, though his colloquial powers were gigantic, could not speak in the Society of Arts: he could not, as he himself expressed it, get on.