Dreads and Drolls by Arthur Machen

Sometime in the summer of 1768, Dr. Samuel Johnson supped at the Crown and Anchor, in the Strand, with a little company that Mr. Boswell had collected to meet him. The company consisted of Dr. Percy, afterwards Bishop of Dromore (Percy's "Reliques"), Dr. Douglas, Mr. Langton ("Lanky"), Dr. Robertson, the historian, Dr. Blair (Blair's "Rhetoric") and Mr. Thomas Davies, the bookseller of Russell Street, Covent Garden. The Scots were all prudent and silent, but Johnson was "in remarkable vigour of mind and eager to exert himself in conversation." He did exert himself in conversation: to the following effect: "He was vehement against old Dr. Mounsey, of Chelsea College, as `a fellow who swore and talked bawdy.' `I have been often in his company (said Dr. Percy), and never heard him swear or talk bawdy.' Mr. Davies, who sat next to Dr. Percy, having after this had some conversation `aside with him, made a discovery which, in his zeal to pay court to Dr. Johnson, he eagerly proclaimed aloud from the foot of the table: `O, Sir, I have found out a very good reason why Dr. Percy never heard Mounsey swear or talk bawdy; for he tells me he never saw him but at the Duke of Northumberland's table! ', `And so, Sir (said Johnson loudly to Dr. Percy), you would shield this man from the charge of swearing and talking bawdy because he did not do so at the Duke of Northumberland's table. Sir, you might as well tell us that you had seen him hold up his hand at the Old Bailey, and he neither swore nor talked bawdy; or that you had seen him in the cart at Tyburn, and he neither swore nor talked bawdy. And is it thus, Sir, that you presume to controvert what I have related? ", Whereupon Dr. Percy left the room in a huff, and next morning Dr. Johnson observed complacently that there had been "good talk."

Of course, the passage had been long familiar to me, but not reading Boswell in the luxury of an annotated edition, I had always speculated vainly as to this "old Dr. Mounsey, " who appears on the great lantern show for a moment, sets Johnson and Percy by the ears, and then vanishes. It was only the other day that I found in an odd old book (published, strangely enough, at Louisville, Kentucky) the true history of Dr. Messenger Mounsey (or Monsey), Physician to Chelsea Hospital.