auseway worth seeing?'
JOHNSON. 'Worth seeing? yes; but not worth going to see.'

Yet he had a kindness for the Irish nation, and thus generously
expressed himself to a gentleman from that country, on the subject of an
UNION which artful Politicians have often had in view--'Do not make an
union with us, Sir. We should unite with you, only to rob you. We should
have robbed the Scotch, if they had had any thing of which we could have
robbed them.'

Of an acquaintance of ours, whose manners and every thing about him,
though expensive, were coarse, he said, 'Sir, you see in him vulgar
prosperity.'

A foreign minister of no very high talents, who had been in his company
for a considerable time quite overlooked, happened luckily to mention
that he had read some of his Rambler in Italian, and admired it
much. This pleased him greatly; he observed that the title had been
translated, Il Genio errante, though I have been told it was rendered
more ludicrously, Il Vagabondo; and finding that this minister gave
such a proof of his taste, he was all attention to him, and on the first
remark which he made, however simple, exclaimed, 'The Ambassadour says
well--His Excellency observes--' And then he expanded and enriched
the little that had been said, in so strong a manner, that it appeared
something of consequence. This was exceedingly entertaining to the
company who were present, and many a time afterwards it furnished a
pleasant topick of merriment: 'The Ambassadour says well,' became a
laughable term of applause, when no mighty matter had been expressed.

I left London on Monday, October 15, and accompanied Colonel Stuart to
Chester, where his regiment was to lye for some time.

1780: AETAT. 71.]--In 1780, the world was kept in impatience for the
completion of his Lives of the Poets, upon which he was employed so far
as his indolence allowed him to labour.

His friend Dr. Lawrence having now suffered the greatest affliction to
which a man is liable, and which Johnson himself had felt in the most
severe manner; Johnson wrote to him in an admirable strain of sympathy
and pious consolation.

'TO DR. LAWRENCE.

'DEAR SIR,--At a time when all your friends ought to shew their
kindness, and with a character which ought to make all that know you
your friends, you may wonder that you have yet heard nothing from me.

'I have been hindered by a vexatious and incessant cough, for which
within these ten days I have been bled once,