aper, he found himself
at a friend's house out of town; and not being disposed to lose pleasure
for the sake of business, wished rather to content his bookseller by
sending some unstudied essay to London by the servant, than deny himself
the company of his acquaintance, and drive away to his chambers for the
purpose of writing something more correct. He therefore took up a French
Journal Litteraire that lay about the room, and translating something he
liked from it, sent it away without further examination. Time, however,
discovered that he had translated from the French a "Rambler" of
Johnson's, which had been but a month before taken from the English; and
thinking it right to make him his personal excuses, he went next day, and
found our friend all covered with soot like a chimney-sweeper, in a
little room, with an intolerable heat and strange smell, as if he had
been acting Lungs in the 'Alchymist,' making aether. "Come, come," says
Dr. Johnson, "dear Mur, the story is black enough now; and it was a very
happy day for me that brought you first to my house, and a very happy
mistake about the 'Ramblers.'"

Dr. Johnson was always exceeding fond of chemistry; and we made up a sort
of laboratory at Streatham one summer, and diverted ourselves with
drawing essences and colouring liquors. But the danger Mr. Thrale found
his friend in one day when I was driven to London, and he had got the
children and servants round him to see some experiments performed, put an
end to all our entertainment, so well was the master of the house
persuaded that his short sight would have been his destruction in a
moment, by bringing him close to a fierce and violent flame. Indeed, it
was a perpetual miracle that he did not set himself on fire reading a-
bed, as was his constant custom, when exceedingly unable even to keep
clear of mischief with our best help; and accordingly the fore-top of all
his wigs were burned by the candle down to the very net work. Mr.
Thrale's valet de chambre, for that reason, kept one always in his own
hands, with which he met him at the parlour-door when the bell had called
him down to dinner, and as he went upstairs to sleep in the afternoon,
the same man constantly followed him with another.

Future experiments in chemistry, however, were too dangerous, and Mr.
Thrale insisted that we should do no more towards finding the
Philosopher's Stone.

Mr. Johnson's amusements were thus reduced to the pleasures of