ives into a corner, and does nothing when he
is there but sit and _growl_; let him come out as I do, and _bark_. The
world," added he, "is chiefly unjust and ungenerous in this, that all are
ready to encourage a man who once talks of leaving it, and few things do
really provoke me more than to hear people prate of retirement, when they
have neither skill to discern their own motives, or penetration to
estimate the consequences. But while a fellow is active to gain either
power or wealth," continued he, "everybody produces some hindrance to his
advancement, some sage remark, or some unfavourable prediction; but let
him once say slightly, I have had enough of this troublesome, bustling
world, 'tis time to leave it now: 'Ah, dear sir!' cries the first old
acquaintance he meets, 'I am glad to find you in this happy disposition:
yes, dear friend! _do_ retire and think of nothing but your own ease.
There's Mr. William will find it a pleasure to settle all your accounts
and relieve you from the fatigue; Miss Dolly makes the charmingest
chicken-broth in the world, and the cheesecakes we ate of hers once, how
good they were. I will be coming every two or three days myself to chat
with you in a quiet way; _so snug_! and tell you how matters go upon
'Change, or in the House, or according to the blockhead's first pursuits,
whether lucrative or politic, which thus he leaves; and lays himself down
a voluntary prey to his own sensuality and sloth, while the ambition and
avarice of the nephews and nieces, with their rascally adherents and
coadjutors, reap the advantage, while they fatten their fool.'"

As the votaries of retirement had little of Mr. Johnson's applause,
unless that he knew that the motives were merely devotional, and unless
he was convinced that their rituals were accompanied by a mortified state
of the body, the sole proof of their sincerity which he would admit, as a
compensation for such fatigue as a worldly life of care and activity
requires; so of the various states and conditions of humanity, he
despised none more, I think, than the man who marries for a maintenance.
And of a friend who made his alliance on no higher principles, he said
once, "Now has that fellow (it was a nobleman of whom we were speaking)
at length obtained a certainty of three meals a day, and for that
certainty, like his brother dog in the fable, he will get his neck galled
for life with a collar."

That poverty was an evil to be avoided by