ed loyalty:
But books to Cambridge gave, as well discerning
That that right loyal body wanted learning."

Which, says Sir William, might well be answered thus:--

"The King to Oxford sent his troop of horse,
For Tories own no argument but force;
With equal care to Cambridge books he sent,
For Whigs allow no force but argument."

Mr. Johnson did him the justice to say it was one of the happiest
extemporaneous productions he ever met with, though he once comically
confessed that he hated to repeat the wit of a Whig urged in support of
Whiggism. Says Garrick to him one day, "Why did not you make me a Tory,
when we lived so much together? You love to make people Tories." "Why,"
says Johnson, pulling a heap of halfpence from his pocket, "did not the
king make these guineas?"

Of Mr. Johnson's Toryism the world has long been witness, and the
political pamphlets written by him in defence of his party are vigorous
and elegant. He often delighted his imagination with the thoughts of
having destroyed Junius, an anonymous writer who flourished in the years
1769 and 1770, and who kept himself so ingeniously concealed from every
endeavour to detect him that no probable guess was, I believe, ever
formed concerning the author's name, though at that time the subject of
general conversation. Mr. Johnson made us all laugh one day, because I
had received a remarkably fine Stilton cheese as a present from some
person who had packed and directed it carefully, but without mentioning
whence it came. Mr. Thrale, desirous to know who we were obliged to,
asked every friend as they came in, but nobody owned it. "Depend upon
it, sir," says Johnson, "it was sent by _Junius_."

The "False Alarm," his first and favourite pamphlet, was written at our
house between eight o'clock on Wednesday night and twelve o'clock on
Thursday night. We read it to Mr. Thrale when he came very late home
from the House of Commons; the other political tracts followed in their
order. I have forgotten which contains the stroke at Junius, but shall
for ever remember the pleasure it gave him to have written it. It was,
however, in the year 1775 that Mr. Edmund Burke made the famous speech in
Parliament that struck even foes with admiration, and friends with
delight. Among the nameless thousands who are contented to echo those
praises they have not skill to invent, _I_ ventured, before Dr. Johnson
himself, to applaud with rapture the beautif