about cabbage. The poem might begin with the advantages of civilised society over a rude state, exemplified by the Scotch, who had no cabbages till Oliver Cromwell's soldiers introduced them; and one might thus show how arts are propagated by conquest, as they were by the Roman arms."

Boswell told him that he heard Dr. Percy meant to write the history of the wolf in Great Britain.

JOHNSON: "The wolf, Sir! why the wolf? Why does he not write of the bear, which we had formerly? Nay, it is said we had the beaver. Or why does he not write of the grey rat -the Hanover rat, as it is called, because it is said to have come into this country about the time that the family of Hanover came? I should like to see The History of the Grey Rat, by Thomas Percy, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty," " (laughing immoderately).-BOSWELL: "I am afraid a Court chaplain could not decently write of the grey rat."-JOHNSON: "Sir, he need not give it the name of the Hanover rat."

They put up that night at the tavern at Henley, where Shenstone had written his famous eulogy on inns-a eulogy which the Doctor enthusiastically endorsed :

"Whoe'er has travell'd life's dull round,

Where'er his stages may have been,

May sigh to think he still has found

The warmest welcome at an inn."

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THE DOCTOR REVISITS OLD SCENES.

CHAPTER XXIX.

JOHNSON VISITS HIS NATIVE DISTRICT-CONVERSATIONS-THE DOCTOR AND AN OLD SCHOOL-MATE.

(1776.)

OUR travellers set out early next morning for Birmingham, reached it about nine o'clock, breakfasted, and then went to Mr. Hector's. On the way Johnson remarked, "You will see, Sir, at Mr. Hector's, his sister, Mrs. Careless, a clergyman's widow. She was the first woman with whom I was in love. It dropped out of my head imperceptibly; but she and I shall always have a kindness for each other." When they reached the house, "Master is gone out," said the servant-girl, in the Warwickshire dialect; "he is gone to the country." JOHNSON: "My name is Johnson; tell him I called. Will you remember the name?"-GIRL: “I don't understand you, Sir."-JOHNSON: "Blockhead, I'll write." He did, however, make another attempt to get his name into her ear, roaring as loud as he could "Johnson," whereupon the stupid girl at last caught the sound.

They next called at Mr. Lloyd's, a Quaker friend of the Doctor's. He too was from home, but his wife received the strangers kindly, and asked them to dinner. "After the uncertainty of all human things at Hector's," said Johnson, "this invitation came very well."

As they strolled through the town Mr. Lloyd joined them in the street; and shortly after they met Friend Hector-in Quaker phraseology, and in fact as well. It did Boswell's eyes good, he says, to see Johnson's meeting with his old schoolfellow-so warm was the greeting on both sides. Mr. Lloyd delicately took Boswell off, and thus the two were left together till dinner time, when all the company re-assembled at our Quaker friend's house. After dinner Mr. Hector took Boswell to see Bolton's grea

LITERARY PHOTOGRAPHS.

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ironworks. "I sell here, Sir," said Mr. Bolton, "what all the world desires to have-POWER." That was well spoken. On returning to Mr. Hector's they found the Doctor there, sitting cosily at tea with his old sweetheart.

Johnson lamented to Hector the state of one of their old schoolfellows, Mr. Charles Congreve, a clergyman, whom he thus described:-"He obtained, I believe, considerable preferment in Ireland, but now lives in London, quite as a valetudinarian, afraid to go into any house but his own. He takes a short airing in his post-chaise every day. He has an elderly woman, whom he calls cousin, who lives with him, and jogs his elbow when his glass has stood too long empty, and encourages him in drinking, in which he is very willing to be encouraged: not that he gets drunk, for he is a very pious man, but he is always muddy. He confesses to one bottle of port every day, and he probably drinks more. He is quite unsocial; his conversation is quite monosyllabical; and when, at my last visit, I asked him what o'clock it was, that signal of my departure had so pleasing an effect on him, that he sprung up to look at his watch, like a greyhound bounding at a hare."

This is one of the many striking photographs which the fine eye of Johnson's intellect took, and his grand memory preserved.

Here is another life-like portrait, which he brought forward on another occasion-that of Mr. Fitzherbert, of Derbyshire :"There was no sparkle, no brilliancy, in Fitzherbert; but I never knew a man who was so generally acceptable. He made everybody quite easy, overpowered nobody by the superiority of his talents, made no man think worse of himself by being his rival, seemed always to listen, did not oblige you to hear much from him, and did not oppose what you said. Everybody liked him; but he had no friend, as I understand the word, nobody with whom he exchanged intimate thoughts. People were willing to think well of everything about him. A gentleman was making an affected rant, as many people do, of great feelings about 'his dear son,' who was at school near London; how anxious he was lest he might be ill, and what he would give to see him. 'Can't you,' said Fitzherbert, 'take a post-chaise and go to him?' This, to

T

be sure, finished the affected man; but there was not much in it. However, this was circulated as wit for a whole winter, and I believe part of a summer too; a proof that he was no very witty man. He was an instance of the truth of the observation, that a man will please more upon the whole by negative qualities than by positive; by never offending than by giving a great deal of place, men hate more steadily than they love; and if I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this, by saying many things to please him.”

delight. In the first

Johnson had been all his life storing up such thoughts and images, and he dropped them thus, in seemingly careless profusion. That man was never idle but when he slept.

Take, as a last specimen, the following picture of Bet Flint: -"Bet wrote her own life in verse, which she brought to me, wishing that I would furnish her with a preface to it (laughing). I used to say of her, that she was generally slut and drunkard ;occasionally whore and thief. She had, however, genteel lodgings, a spinnet on which she played, and a boy that walked before her chair. Poor Bet was taken up on a charge of stealing a counterpane, and tried at the Old Bailey. Chief Justice who loved a wench, summed up favourably, and she was acquitted, After which Bet said, with a gay and satisfied air, 'Now that the counterpane is my own, I shall make a petticoat of it.""

Look long enough through these little holes, and you will have the vision of a strange and wonderfully varied life.

When the Doctor took his leave, he said to Hector, "Don't grow like Congreve; nor let me grow like him when you are near me."

Talking again, that evening, of Mrs. Careless, Johnson said :— "If I had married her, it might have been as happy for me."BOSWELL: "Pray, Sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as happy as with any one woman in particular ?"-JOHNSON: "Ay, Sir, fifty thousand."-BOSWELL: "Then, Sir, you are not of opinion with some who imagine that certain men and certain women are made for each other; and that they cannot be happy

if they miss their counterparts."-JOHNSON: "To be sure not, Sir. I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter."

Tetty would not have liked to hear that: but the Doctor was not serious just then; that was the talk of one of his moods, and not the real outcome of his deepest feeling. That feeling we already know-his Diary and his Meditations have betrayed him again and again.

The Doctor being impatient to reach his native city that night, the travellers continued their journey in the dark. Johnson was pensive and silent, his meditations seeming to have taken the colour of the gloom without. When they came within sight of the Lichfield lamps he exclaimed, "Now we are getting out of a state of death." All sadness had fled, however, by the time they had got comfortably housed at the Three Crowns a good oldfashioned inn, next door to the house in which Johnson was born and brought up. They supped like princes, and became actually jolly. "A tavern-chair is the throne of human felicity," our Author once declared; and here he was now monarchizing with no fewer than Three Crowns over his royal brow.

At dinner next day they had as a guest a Mr. Jackson, one of the Doctor's old schoolmates-a poor fellow, in a coarse grey coat, black waistcoat, greasy leather breeches, and yellow uncurled wig, with a countenance, moreover, which told a tale not of sobriety. He had tried to be a cutler in Birmingham; but, failing in that, had taken to dressing leather in some new and improved way, of which he gave the Doctor a full account, and to which the Doctor listened with marked attention,- meaning to give the broken man his best advice. Great friends or small, Johnson forgets none of them; though the needy and the unfortunate have always most of his sympathy. As he looked at the coarse grey coat" and battered appearance of this old schoolfellow, he may have thought of his own shoeless days at college, and his own homeless wanderings about the London streets. That

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