lking in a wood when it rained, she tells us, "was
the only rural image he pleased his fancy with; for he would say,
after one has gathered the apples in an orchard, one wishes them well
baked, and removed to a London eating-house for enjoyment." This is
almost as bad as the foreigner, who complained that there was no ripe
fruit in England but the roasted apples. Amongst other modes of
passing time in the country, Johnson once or twice tried hunting and,
mounted on an old horse of Mr. Thrale's, acquitted himself to the
surprise of the "field," one of whom delighted him by exclaiming,
"Why Johnson rides as well, for ought I see, as the most illiterate
fellow in England." But a trial or two satisfied him--

"He thought at heart like courtly Chesterfield,
Who after a long chase o'er hills, dales, fields,
And what not, though he rode beyond all price,
Ask'd next day,'If men ever hunted twice?'"

It is very strange, and very melancholy, was his reflection, that the
paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting
one of them. The mode of locomotion in which he delighted was the
vehicular. As he was driving rapidly in a postchaise with Boswell, he
exclaimed, "Life has not many things better than this." On their way
from Dr. Taylor's to Derby in 1777, he said, "If I had no duties, and
no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in
a postchaise with a pretty woman, but she should be one who could
understand me, and would add something to the conversation."

Mr. Croker attributes his enjoyment to the novelty of the pleasure;
his poverty having in early life prevented him from travelling post.
But a better reason is given by Mrs. Thrale:

"I asked him why he doated on a coach so? and received for answer,
that in the first place, the company were shut in with him _there_;
and could not escape, as out of a room; in the next place, he heard
all that was said in a carriage, where it was my turn to be deaf; and
very impatient was he at my occasional difficulty of hearing. On this
account he wished to travel all over the world: for the very act of
going forward was delightful to him, and he gave himself no concern
about accidents, which he said never happened; nor did the
running-away of the horses at the edge of a precipice between Vernon
and St. Denys in France convince him to the contrary: 'for nothing
came of it,' he said, 'except that Mr. Thrale leaped out of the
carriage into