A characteristic passage relates an attempt to make fun of Johnson by inquiring if he took dancing lessons:
I ventured to mention a ludicrous passage in the newspapers, that Dr. Johnson was learning to dance of Vestris. Lord Charlemont, wishing to excite him to talk, proposed in a whisper, that he should be asked whether it was true. 'Shall I ask him?' said his Lordship. We were by a great majority clear for the experiment.
In these few words Boswell has recalled the spirit of the scene. We have a vision of Johnson sitting terrible in the midst, and his hearers feeling and behaving like schoolboys in the presence of some bearish pedagogue. Some one proposes an audacious jest, and all await with eagerness the crucial moment. You may sit upon the edge of a volcano, or you may fire the train which shall explode a planet, but no expectancy is so keen as this.
His Lordship very gravely and with a courteous air said, 'Pray, sir, is it true that you are taking lessons of Vestris?' ... This was risking a good deal, and required the boldness of a General of Irish Volunteers to make the attempt.
The explosion unerringly follows, but the rumble dies away in rippling laughter:
Johnson was at first startled and in some heat answered, 'How can your Lordship ask so simple a question?' But immediately recovering himself, whether from unwillingness to be deceived or to appear deceived, or whether from real good-humour, he kept up the joke....
Johnson in these scenes of comedy is always the dictator; the elements of the ridiculous are constantly present when someone who behaves with a pompous manner is rarely willing to be laughed at, and Boswell's sense of what was incongruous was near the surface and ready to make merry.
The company on one occasion were greatly tickled by a word applied in Johnson's most majestic manner to a rather laughable female character, and the incident furnishes Boswell with material for one of his best descriptions of this kind. Johnson had remarked 'The woman had a bottom of good sense.'
The word _bottom_ [says Boswell] thus introduced, was so ludicrous when contrasted with his gravity, that most of us could not forbear tittering and laughing; though I recollect that the Bishop of Killaloe kept his countenance with perfect steadiness, while Miss Hannah More slyly hid her face behind a lady's back who sat on the same settee with her. His pride could not bear that any expression of his should excite ridicule, when he did not intend it; he therefore resolved to assume and exercise despotick power, glanced sternly around, and called out in a strong tone, 'Where's the merriment?' Then collecting himself, and looking aweful, to make us feel how he could impose restraint, and as it were searching his mind for a still more ludicrous word, he slowly pronounced, 'I say the _woman_ was _fundamentally_ sensible'; as if he had said, 'Hear this now, and laugh if you dare.' We all sat composed as at a funeral.