s. Williams, and call out,' At
her again, Poll! Never flinch, Poll!'

"_Dr. J_.--Why I took to Poll very well at first, but she won't do
upon a nearer examination.

"_Mrs. T_.--How came she among you, Sir?

"_Dr. J_.--Why I don't rightly remember, but we could spare her very
well from us. Poll is a stupid slut; I had some hopes of her at
first; but when I talked to her tightly and closely, I could make
nothing of her; she was wiggle waggle, and I could never persuade her
to be categorical."

The effect of an unbroken residence with such inmates, on a man of
irritable temper subject to morbid melancholy, may be guessed; and
the merit of the Thrales in rescuing him from it, and in soothing
down his asperities, can hardly be over-estimated. Lord Macaulay
says, they were flattered by finding that a man so widely celebrated
preferred their house to every other in London; and suggests that
even the peculiarities which seem to unfit him for civilised society,
including his gesticulations, his rollings, his puffings, his
mutterings, and the ravenous eagerness with which he devoured his
food, increased the interest which his new associates took in him.
His hostess does not appear to have viewed them in that light, and
she was able to command the best company of the intellectual order
without the aid of a "lion," or a bear. If his conversation attracted
many, it drove away many, and silenced more. He accounted for the
little attention paid him by the great, by saying that "great lords
and great ladies do not like to have their mouths stopped," as if
this was peculiar to them as a class. "My leddie," remarks Cuddie in
"Old Mortality," "canna weel bide to be contradicted, as I ken
neabody likes, if they could help themselves."

Johnson was in the zenith of his fame when literature, politics, and
fashion began to blend together again by hardly perceptible shades,
like the colours in shot-silk, as they had partially done in the
Augustan age of Queen Anne. One marked sign was the formation of the
Literary Club (The Club, as it still claims to be called), which
brought together Fox, Burke, Gibbon, Johnson, Goldsmith, Garrick,
Reynolds, and Beauclerc, besides blackballing a bishop (the Bishop of
Chester), and a lord-chancellor (Camden).[1] Yet it is curious to
observe within how narrow a circle of good houses the Doctor's
engagements were restricted. Reynolds, Paoli, Beauclerc, Allan
Ramsay, Hoole, Dilly, Strahan, Lord Lucan, Lan