, and had the
best opportunities of knowing the state of the poor, told me, that I
under-rated the number, when I computed that twenty a week, that is,
above a thousand a year, died of hunger; not absolutely of immediate
hunger; but of the wasting and other diseases which are the consequences
of hunger. This happens only in so large a place as London, where people
are not known. What we are told about the great sums got by begging is
not true: the trade is overstocked. And, you may depend upon it, there
are many who cannot get work. A particular kind of manufacture fails:
those who have been used to work at it, can, for some time, work at
nothing else. You meet a man begging; you charge him with idleness:
he says, "I am willing to labour. Will you give me work?"--"I
cannot."--"Why, then you have no right to charge me with idleness."' We
left Mr. Strahan's at seven, as Johnson had said he intended to go to
evening prayers. As we walked along, he complained of a little gout
in his toe, and said, 'I shan't go to prayers to-night; I shall go
to-morrow: Whenever I miss church on a Sunday, I resolve to go another
day. But I do not always do it.' This was a fair exhibition of that
vibration between pious resolutions and indolence, which many of us have
too often experienced.

I went home with him, and we had a long quiet conversation.

BOSWELL. 'Why, Sir, do people play this trick which I observe now, when
I look at your grate, putting the shovel against it to make the fire
burn?' JOHNSON. 'They play the trick, but it does not make the fire
burn. THERE is a better; (setting the poker perpendicularly up at right
angles with the grate.) In days of superstition they thought, as it made
a cross with the bars, it would drive away the witch.'

BOSWELL. 'By associating with you, Sir, I am always getting an accession
of wisdom. But perhaps a man, after knowing his own character--the
limited strength of his own mind, should not be desirous of having too
much wisdom, considering, quid valeant humeri, how little he can carry.'
JOHNSON. 'Sir, be as wise as you can; let a man be aliis laetus, sapiens
sibi:

"Though pleas'd to see the dolphins play,
I mind my compass and my way."

You may be wise in your study in the morning, and gay in company at a
tavern in the evening. Every man is to take care of his own wisdom and
his own virtue, without minding too much what others think.'

He said, 'Dodsley first mentioned to me the