ng. My
only remaining friend had changed his principles, and was become the
tool of the predominant faction. My daughter-in-law, from whom I
expected most, and whom I met with sincere benevolence, had lost the
beauty and gaiety of youth, without having gained much of the wisdom
of age. I wandered about for five days, and took the first convenient
opportunity of returning to a place, where, if there is not much
happiness, there is at least such a diversity of good and evil, that
slight vexations do not fix upon the heart.

I think in a few weeks to try another excursion; though to what end?
Let me know, my Baretti, what has been the result of your return to
your own country; whether time has made any alteration for the better,
and, whether, when the first rapture of salutation was over, you did
not find your thoughts confessed their disappointment.

Henceforward Johnson had no longer to struggle with the evils of
extreme poverty. A pension of L300 was granted to him, in 1762, by His
Majesty. Before his acceptance of it, in answer to a question put by him
to the Earl of Bute, in these words, "Pray, my Lord, what am I to do for
the pension?" he was assured by that nobleman that it was not given him
for any thing he was to do, but for what he had done. The definition he
had given of the word pension, in his dictionary, that in England it was
generally understood to mean pay, given to a state hireling, for treason
to his country, raised some further scruples whether he ought himself to
become a pensioner; but they were removed by the arguments, or the
persuasion of Mr. Reynolds, to whom he had recourse for advice in this
dilemma. What advice Reynolds would give him he must have known pretty
well before-hand; but this was one of the many instances in which men,
having first determined how to act, are willing to imagine that they are
going for clearer information, where they in truth expect nothing but a
confirmation of their own resolve. The liberality of the nation could
not have been extended to one who had better deserved it. But he had a
calamity yet more dreadful than poverty to encounter. The depression of
his spirits was now become almost intolerable. "I would have a limb
amputated," said he to Dr. Adams, "to recover my spirits." He was
constantly tormented by harassing reflections on his inability to keep
the many resolutions he had formed of leading a better life; and
complained that a kind