Note 574 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 3)

I am happy, however, to mention a pleasing instance of his enduring with great gentleness to hear one of his most striking particularities pointed out:—Miss Hunter, a niece of his friend Christopher Smart, when a very young girl, struck by his extraordinary motions, said to him, 'Pray, Dr. Johnson, why do you make such strange gestures?' 'From bad habit,' he replied. 'Do you, my dear, take care to guard against bad habits.' This I was told by the young lady's brother at Margate. BOSWELL. Boswell had himself told Johnson of some of them, at least in writing. Johnson read in manuscript his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Boswell says in a note on Oct. 12:—'It is remarkable that Dr. Johnson should have read this account of some of his own peculiar habits, without saying anything on the subject, which I hoped he would have done.'