s return from
Scotland, in the style of Swift's humorous epistle in the character
of Mary Gulliver to her husband, Captain Lemuel Gulliver, on his
return to England from the country of the Houyhnhnms:--

"'At early morn I to the market haste,
Studious in ev'ry thing to please thy taste.
A curious _fowl_ and _sparagrass_ I chose;
(For I remember you were fond of those:)
Three shillings cost the first, the last seven groats;
Sullen you turn from both, and call for OATS.'

He laughed, and asked in whose name I would write it. I said in Mrs.
Thrale's. He was angry. 'Sir, if you have any sense of decency or
delicacy, you won't do that.' _Boswell_. 'Then let it be in Cole's,
the landlord of the Mitre tavern, where we have so often sat
together.' _Johnson_. 'Ay, that may do.'"

Again, at Inverary, when Johnson called for a gill of whiskey that he
might know what makes a Scotchman happy, and Boswell proposed Mrs.
Thrale as their toast, he would not have _her_ drunk in whiskey.
Peter Pindar has maliciously added to this reproof:--

"We supped most royally, were vastly frisky,
When Johnson ordered up a gill of whiskey.
Taking the glass, says I, 'Here's Mistress Thrale,'
'Drink her in _whiskey_ not,' said he, 'but _ale_.'"

So far from making light of her scholarship, he frequently accepted
her as a partner in translations from the Latin. The translations
from Boethius, printed in the second volume of the Letters, are their
joint composition.

After recapitulating Johnson's other contributions to literature in
1766, Boswell says, "'The Fountains,' a beautiful little fairy tale
in prose, written with exquisite simplicity, is one of Johnson's
productions; and I cannot withhold from Mrs. Thrale the praise of
being the author of that admirable poem 'The Three Warnings.'"
_Marginal note_: "How sorry he is!" Both the tale and the poem were
written for a collection of "Miscellanies," published by Mrs.
Williams in that year. The character of Floretta in "The Fountains"
was intended for Mrs. Thrale, and she thus gracefully alludes to it
in a letter to Johnson in Feb. 1782:

"The newspapers would spoil my few comforts that are left if they
could; but you tell me that's only because I have the reputation,
whether true or false, of being a _wit_ forsooth; and you remember
_poor Floretta_, who was teased into wishing away her spirit, her
beauty, her fortune, and at last even her life, never could bear the
bitter