ng consoled
by you, which, in the first violence of it, I believe, would not be the
case.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; violent pain of mind, like violent pain of
body, MUST be severely felt.' BOSWELL. 'I own, Sir, I have not so much
feeling for the distress of others, as some people have, or pretend to
have: but I know this, that I would do all in my power to relieve them.'
JOHNSON. 'Sir it is affectation to pretend to feel the distress of
others, as much as they do themselves. It is equally so, as if one
should pretend to feel as much pain while a friend's leg is cutting off,
as he does. No, Sir; you have expressed the rational and just nature
of sympathy. I would have gone to the extremity of the earth to have
preserved this boy.'

He was soon quite calm. The letter was from Mr. Thrale's clerk, and
concluded, 'I need not say how much they wish to see you in London.' He
said, 'We shall hasten back from Taylor's.'

Mrs. Lucy Porter and some other ladies of the place talked a great
deal of him when he was out of the room, not only with veneration but
affection. It pleased me to find that he was so much BELOVED in his
native city.

Mrs. Aston, whom I had seen the preceding night, and her sister, Mrs.
Gastrel, a widow lady, had each a house and garden, and pleasure-ground,
prettily situated upon Stowhill, a gentle eminence, adjoining to
Lichfield. Johnson walked away to dinner there, leaving me by myself
without any apology; I wondered at this want of that facility of
manners, from which a man has no difficulty in carrying a friend to a
house where he is intimate; I felt it very unpleasant to be thus left in
solitude in a country town, where I was an entire stranger, and began to
think myself unkindly deserted; but I was soon relieved, and convinced
that my friend, instead of being deficient in delicacy, had conducted
the matter with perfect propriety, for I received the following note in
his handwriting: 'Mrs. Gastrel, at the lower house on Stowhill, desires
Mr. Boswell's company to dinner at two.' I accepted of the invitation,
and had here another proof how amiable his character was in the opinion
of those who knew him best. I was not informed, till afterwards,
that Mrs. Gastrel's husband was the clergyman who, while he lived at
Stratford upon Avon, where he was proprietor of Shakspeare's garden,
with Gothick barbarity cut down his mulberry-tree, and, as Dr. Johnson
told me, did it to vex his neighbours. His lady, I have reaso