neglected him, not wilfully, but from being otherwise occupied. Always,
Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination
prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love
you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.'

I asked him if he was not dissatisfied with having so small a share
of wealth, and none of those distinctions in the state which are the
objects of ambition. He had only a pension of three hundred a year. Why
was he not in such circumstances as to keep his coach? Why had he not
some considerable office? JOHNSON. 'Sir, I have never complained of the
world; nor do I think that I have reason to complain. It is rather to
be wondered at that I have so much. My pension is more out of the usual
course of things than any instance that I have known. Here, Sir, was
a man avowedly no friend to Government at the time, who got a pension
without asking for it. I never courted the great; they sent for me; but
I think they now give me up. They are satisfied; they have seen enough
of me.'

Strange, however, it is, to consider how few of the great sought his
society; so that if one were disposed to take occasion for satire on
that account, very conspicuous objects present themselves. His noble
friend, Lord Elibank, well observed, that if a great man procured an
interview with Johnson, and did not wish to see him more, it shewed a
mere idle curiosity, and a wretched want of relish for extraordinary
powers of mind. Mrs. Thrale justly and wittily accounted for such
conduct by saying, that Johnson's conversation was by much too strong
for a person accustomed to obsequiousness and flattery; it was mustard
in a young child's mouth!

On Saturday, June 2, I set out for Scotland, and had promised to pay a
visit in my way, as I sometimes did, at Southill, in Bedfordshire, at
the hospitable mansion of 'Squire Dilly, the elder brother of my worthy
friends, the booksellers, in the Poultry. Dr. Johnson agreed to be of
the party this year, with Mr. Charles Dilly and me, and to go and see
Lord Bute's seat at Luton Hoe. He talked little to us in the carriage,
being chiefly occupied in reading Dr. Watson's second volume of Chemical
Essays, which he liked very well, and his own Prince of Abyssinia, on
which he seemed to be intensely fixed; having told us, that he had not
looked at it since it was first published. I happened to take it out of
my pocket this day, and he seized upon it