remember to add," says Mr. Johnson,
"that though these verses were planned, and even begun, when I was
sixteen years old, I never could find time to make an end of them before
I was sixty-eight."

This facility of writing, and this dilatoriness ever to write, Mr.
Johnson always retained, from the days that he lay abed and dictated his
first publication to Mr. Hector, who acted as his amanuensis, to the
moment he made me copy out those variations in Pope's "Homer" which are
printed in the "Poets' Lives." "And now," said he, when I had finished
it for him, "I fear not Mr. Nicholson of a pin." The fine 'Rambler,' on
the subject of Procrastination, was hastily composed, as I have heard, in
Sir Joshua Reynolds's parlour, while the boy waited to carry it to press;
and numberless are the instances of his writing under immediate pressure
of importunity or distress. He told me that the character of Sober in
the 'Idler' was by himself intended as his own portrait, and that he had
his own outset into life in his eye when he wrote the Eastern story of
"Gelaleddin." Of the allegorical papers in the 'Rambler,' Labour and Rest
was his favourite; but Scrotinus, the man who returns late in life to
receive honours in his native country, and meets with mortification
instead of respect, was by him considered as a masterpiece in the science
of life and manners. The character of Prospero in the fourth volume
Garrick took to be his; and I have heard the author say that he never
forgave the offence. Sophron was likewise a picture drawn from reality,
and by Gelidus, the philosopher, he meant to represent Mr. Coulson, a
mathematician, who formerly lived at Rochester. The man immortalised for
purring like a cat was, as he told me, one Busby, a proctor in the
Commons. He who barked so ingeniously, and then called the drawer to
drive away the dog, was father to Dr. Salter, of the Charterhouse. He
who sang a song, and by correspondent motions of his arm chalked out a
giant on the wall, was one Richardson, an attorney. The letter signed
"Sunday" was written by Miss Talbot; and he fancied the billets in the
first volume of the 'Rambler' were sent him by Miss Mulso, now Mrs.
Chapone. The papers contributed by Mrs. Carter had much of his esteem,
though he always blamed me for preferring the letter signed "Chariessa"
to the allegory, where religion and superstition are indeed most masterly
delineated.

When Dr. Johnson read his own satire, in