you are near me.'

When he again talked of Mrs. Careless to-night, he seemed to have had
his affection revived; for he 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 characters and circumstances, without the parties
having any choice in the matter.'

I wished to have staid at Birmingham to-night, to have talked more with
Mr. Hector; but my friend was impatient to reach his native city; so we
drove on that stage in the dark, and were long pensive and silent. When
we came within the focus of the Lichfield lamps, 'Now (said he,) we are
getting out of a state of death.' We put up at the Three Crowns, not one
of the great inns, but a good old fashioned one, which was kept by Mr.
Wilkins, and was the very next house to that in which Johnson was
born and brought up, and which was still his own property. We had a
comfortable supper, and got into high spirits. I felt all my Toryism
glow in this old capital of Staffordshire. I could have offered incense
genio loci; and I indulged in libations of that ale, which Boniface, in
The Beaux Stratagem, recommends with such an eloquent jollity.

Next morning he introduced me to Mrs. Lucy Porter, his step-daughter.
She was now an old maid, with much simplicity of manner. She had never
been in London. Her brother, a Captain in the navy, had left her a
fortune of ten thousand pounds; about a third of which she had laid
out in building a stately house, and making a handsome garden, in an
elevated situation in Lichfield. Johnson, when here by himself, used to
live at her house. She reverenced him, and he had a parental tenderness
for her.

We then visited Mr. Peter Garrick, who had that morning received a
letter from his brother David, announcing our coming to Lichfield. He
was engaged to dinner, but asked us to tea, and to sleep at his house.
Johnson, however, would not quit his old acquaintance Wilkins, of the
Three