Repressing Colloquial Barbarisms #2

From the Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell 1791

Johnson gave a very earnest reccomendation of what he himself practiced with the utmost conscientiousness: I mean a strict attention to truth, even in the most minute particulars. He was indeed so much impressed with the prevalence of falsehood, voluntary or unintentional, that I never knew any person who upon hearing an extraordinary circumstance told, discovered more of the incredulus odi. He would say, with a significant look and decisive tone, 'It is not so. Do not tell this again'. He inculcated upon all his friends the importance of perpetual vigilance against the slightest degrees of falsehood; the effect of which, as Sir Joshua Reynolds observed to me, has been, that all who were of his school are distinguished for a love of truth and accuracy, which they would not have possessed in the same degree, if they had not been acquanted with Johnson.