much of the famous Lichfield
ale. If Boswell wished, as he says, to offer incense to the spirit of
the place, how much more may we desire to do so to-night, when exactly
125 years have passed, and his hero is now more than ever recognized as a
king of men.

I do not suggest that we should honour Johnson in quite the same way that
Boswell did. This is a more abstemious age. But we must drink to his
memory all the same. Think of it. A century and a quarter have passed
since that memorable evening at the _Three Crowns_, when Johnson and
Boswell thus foregathered in this very room. You recall the journey from
Birmingham of the two companions. "We are getting out of a state of
death," the Doctor said with relief, as he approached his native city,
feeling all the magic and invigoration that is said to come to those who
in later years return to "calf-land." Then how good he was to an old
schoolfellow who called upon him here. The fact that this man had failed
in the battle of life while Johnson had succeeded, only made the Doctor
the kinder. I know of no more human picture than that--"A Mr. Jackson,"
as he is called by Boswell, "in his coarse grey coat," obviously very
poor, and as Boswell suggests, "dull and untaught." The "great Cham of
Literature" listens patiently as the worthy Jackson tells his troubles,
so much more patiently than he would have listened to one of the famous
men of his Club in London, and the hero-worshipping Boswell drinks his
deep potations, but never neglects to take notes the while. Of Boswell
one remembers further that Johnson had told Wilkes that he had brought
him to Lichfield, "my native city," "that he might see for once real
Civility--for you know he lives among savages in Scotland, and among
rakes in London." All good stories are worth hearing again and again,
and so I offer an apology for recalling the picture to your mind at this
time and in this place.

Alas! I have not the gift of the worldfamed Lord Verulam, who, as Francis
Bacon, sat in the House of Commons. The members, we are told, so
delighted in his oratory that when he rose to speak they "were fearful
lest he should make an end." I am making an end. Johnson then was not
only a great writer, a conversationalist so unique that his sayings have
passed more into current speech than those of any other Englishman, but
he was also a great moralist--a superb inspiration to a better life. We
should not love Johnson so much