the King withdrew, Johnson shewed
himself highly pleased with his Majesty's conversation and gracious
behaviour. He said to Mr. Barnard, "Sir, they may talk of the King as
they will; but he is the finest gentleman I have ever seen." And he
afterwards observed to Mr. Langton, "Sir, his manners are those of as
fine a gentleman as we may suppose Lewis the Fourteenth, or Charles the
Second."

Nothing in this conversation betrays symptoms of that state which he
complains of in his devotional record (on the 2nd of August, 1767) when
he says that he had been disturbed and unsettled for a long time, and
had been without resolution to apply to study or to business. Half of
this year he passed at a distance from the metropolis, and chiefly at
Lichfield, where he prayed fervently by the death-bed of the old servant
of his family, Catherine Chambers, leaving her with a fond farewell, and
many tears. There was no greater proof of the goodness of Johnson's
nature, than his attachment to his domestics. Soon after this he placed
Francis Barber, a negro boy who waited on him, at a school at
Hertfordshire; and, during his education there, encouraged him to good
behaviour by frequent and very kind letters. It is on such occasions
that we are ready to allow the justice of Goldsmith's vindication of his
friend, that he had nothing of the bear but the skin.

In the two succeeding years he continued to labour under the same
restlessness and anxiety; again sought for relief in a long visit to
Oxford, and another to Brighthelmstone with the Thrales; and produced
nothing but a Prologue to one of Goldsmith's comedies.

The repeated expulsion of Wilkes from his seat, by a vote of the House
of Commons, had (in 1770) thrown the nation into a ferment. Johnson was
roused to take the side of the ministry; and endeavoured in a pamphlet,
called the False Alarm, as much by ridicule as by argument, to support a
violent and arbitrary measure. It appears, both from his conversation
and his writings, that he thought there was a point at which resistance
might become justifiable; and, surely it is more advisable to check the
encroachments of power at their beginning, than to delay opposition,
till it cannot be resorted to without greater hazard to the public
safety. The ministry were happily compelled to give way. They were,
however, glad to have so powerful an arm to fight their battles, and, in
the next year (1771) employed him in a worthier cause. In his