ick when Peg Woffington made it, and made it, as Garrick
grumbled, "as red as blood." But when Garrick became rich he became
liberal. He had, so Johnson declared, given away more money than any man
in England.

After Garrick's death, Johnson took occasion to say, in the _Lives of
the Poets_, that the death "had eclipsed the gaiety of nations and
diminished the public stock of harmless pleasures." Boswell ventured to
criticise the observation rather spitefully. "Why _nations_? Did his
gaiety extend further than his own nation?" "Why, sir," replied Johnson,
"some imagination must be allowed. Besides, we may say _nations_ if we
allow the Scotch to be a nation, and to have gaiety--which they have
not." On the whole, in spite of various drawbacks, Johnson's reported
observations upon Garrick will appear to be discriminative, and yet, on
the whole, strongly favourable to his character. Yet we are not quite
surprised that Mrs. Garrick did not respond to a hint thrown out by
Johnson, that he would be glad to write the life of his friend.

At Oxford, Johnson acquired the friendship of Dr. Adams, afterwards
Master of Pembroke and author of a once well-known reply to Hume's
argument upon miracles. He was an amiable man, and was proud to do the
honours of the university to his old friend, when, in later years,
Johnson revisited the much-loved scenes of his neglected youth. The
warmth of Johnson's regard for old days is oddly illustrated by an
interview recorded by Boswell with one Edwards, a fellow-student whom he
met again in 1778, not having previously seen him since 1729. They had
lived in London for forty years without once meeting, a fact more
surprising then than now. Boswell eagerly gathered up the little scraps
of college anecdote which the meeting produced, but perhaps his best
find was a phrase of Edwards himself. "You are a philosopher, Dr.
Johnson," he said; "I have tried, too, in my time to be a philosopher;
but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in." The phrase,
as Boswell truly says, records an exquisite trait of character.

Of the friends who gathered round Johnson during his period of struggle,
many had vanished before he became well known. The best loved of all
seems to have been Dr. Bathurst, a physician, who, failing to obtain
practice, joined the expedition to Havannah, and fell a victim to the
climate (1762). Upon him Johnson pronounced a panegyric which has
contributed a proverbial phrase t