served that her life might have been saved if
she had been put into a small chandler's shop, with a child to nurse.
When Mrs. Thrale suggested that a lady would be grieved because her
friend had lost the chance of a fortune, "She will suffer as much,
perhaps," he replied, "as your horse did when your cow miscarried." Mrs.
Thrale testifies that he once reproached her sternly for complaining of
the dust. When he knew, he said, how many poor families would perish
next winter for want of the bread which the drought would deny, he could
not bear to hear ladies sighing for rain on account of their complexions
or their clothes. While reporting such sayings, she adds, that he loved
the poor as she never saw any one else love them, with an earnest desire
to make them happy. His charity was unbounded; he proposed to allow
himself one hundred a year out of the three hundred of his pension; but
the Thrales could never discover that he really spent upon himself more
than 70_l_., or at most 80_l_. He had numerous dependants, abroad as
well as at home, who "did not like to see him latterly, unless he
brought 'em money." He filled his pockets with small cash which he
distributed to beggars in defiance of political economy. When told that
the recipients only laid it out upon gin or tobacco, he replied that it
was savage to deny them the few coarse pleasures which the richer
disdained. Numerous instances are given of more judicious charity. When,
for example, a Benedictine monk, whom he had seen in Paris, became a
Protestant, Johnson supported him for some months in London, till he
could get a living. Once coming home late at night, he found a poor
woman lying in the street. He carried her to his house on his back, and
found that she was reduced to the lowest stage of want, poverty, and
disease. He took care of her at his own charge, with all tenderness,
until she was restored to health, and tried to have her put into a
virtuous way of living. His house, in his later years, was filled with
various waifs and strays, to whom he gave hospitality and sometimes
support, defending himself by saying that if he did not help them nobody
else would. The head of his household was Miss Williams, who had been a
friend of his wife's, and after coming to stay with him, in order to
undergo an operation for cataract, became a permanent inmate of his
house. She had a small income of some 40_l_. a year, partly from the
charity of connexions of her father's,