courteousness,
and talked a great deal to him, as to a school-boy, of the course of his
education, and other particulars. When he afterwards came to know and
understand the high character of this great man, he recollected his
condescension with wonder. He added, that when he was going away, Mr.
Johnson presented him with half-a-guinea; and this, said Mr. Howard, was
at a time when he probably had not another.

We retired from Mrs. Williams to another room. Tom Davies soon after
joined us. He had now unfortunately failed in his circumstances, and
was much indebted to Dr. Johnson's kindness for obtaining for him many
alleviations of his distress. After he went away, Johnson blamed his
folly in quitting the stage, by which he and his wife got five hundred
pounds a year. I said, I believed it was owing to Churchill's attack
upon him,

'He mouths a sentence, as curs mouth a bone.'

JOHNSON. 'I believe so too, Sir. But what a man is he, who is to be
driven from the stage by a line? Another line would have driven him from
his shop.'

He returned next day to Streatham, to Mr. Thrale's; where, as Mr.
Strahan once complained to me, 'he was in a great measure absorbed from
the society of his old friends.' I was kept in London by business, and
wrote to him on the 27th, that a separation from him for a week, when we
were so near, was equal to a separation for a year, when we were at four
hundred miles distance. I went to Streatham on Monday, March 30. Before
he appeared, Mrs. Thrale made a very characteristical remark:--'I do not
know for certain what will please Dr. Johnson: but I know for certain
that it will displease him to praise any thing, even what he likes,
extravagantly.'

At dinner he laughed at querulous declamations against the age, on
account of luxury,--increase of London,--scarcity of provisions,--and
other such topicks. 'Houses (said he,) will be built till rents fall:
and corn is more plentiful now than ever it was.'

I had before dinner repeated a ridiculous story told me by an old man
who had been a passenger with me in the stage-coach to-day. Mrs. Thrale,
having taken occasion to allude to it in talking to me, called it 'The
story told you by the old WOMAN.'--'Now, Madam, (said I,) give me leave
to catch you in the fact; it was not an old WOMAN, but an old MAN, whom
I mentioned as having told me this.' I presumed to take an opportunity,
in presence of Johnson, of shewing this lively lady how ready she