"Memoir, &c." vol. i. p.66, note, where she adds:--"I have
heard it said, that into whatever company she (Mrs. T.) fell, she
could be the most agreeable person in it."]

On one of her canvassing expeditions, Johnson accompanied her, and a
rough fellow, a hatter by trade, seeing the moralist's hat in a state
of decay, seized it suddenly with one hand, and clapping him on the
back with the other, cried out, "Ah, Master Johnson, this is no time
to be thinking about hats." "No, no, Sir," replied the Doctor, "hats
are of no use now, as you say, except to throw up in the air and
huzzah with;" accompanying his words with the true election halloo.

Thrale had serious thoughts of repaying Johnson's electioneering aid
in kind, by bringing him into Parliament. Sir John Hawkins says that
Thrale had two meetings with the minister (Lord North), who at first
seemed inclined to find Johnson a seat, but eventually
discountenanced the project. Lord Stowell told Mr. Croker that Lord
North did not feel quite sure that Johnson's support might not
sometimes prove rather an incumbrance than a help. "His lordship
perhaps thought, and not unreasonably, that, like the elephant in the
battle, he was quite as likely to trample down his friends as his
foes." Flood doubted whether Johnson, being long used to sententious
brevity and the short flights of conversation, would have succeeded
in the expanded kind of argument required in public speaking. Burke's
opinion was, that if he had come early into Parliament, he would have
been the greatest speaker ever known in it. Upon being told this by
Reynolds, he exclaimed, "I should like to try my hand now." On
Boswell's adding that he wished he _had_, Mrs. Thrale writes:
"Boswell had leisure for curiosity: Ministers had not. Boswell would
have been equally amused by his failure as by his success; but to
Lord North there would have been no joke at all in the experiment
ending untowardly."

He was equally ready with advice and encouragement during the
difficulties connected with the brewery. He was not of opinion with
Aristotle and Parson Adams, that trade is below a philosopher[1]; and
he eagerly buried himself in computing the cost of the malt and the
possible profits on the ale. In October 1772, he writes from
Lichfield:

[Footnote 1: "Trade, answered Adams, is below a philosopher, as
Aristotle proves in his first chapter of 'Politics,' and unnatural,
as it is managed now."--_Joseph Andrews_.]

"Do