heard he hated a Whig. "Dear
Bathurst," said he to me one day, "was a man to my very heart's content:
he hated a fool, and he hated a rogue, and he hated a _Whig_; he was a
very good _hater_."

Some one mentioned a gentleman of that party for having behaved oddly on
an occasion where faction was not concerned: "Is he not a citizen of
London, a native of North America, and a Whig?" says Johnson. "Let him
be absurd, I beg you of you; when a monkey is _too_ like a man, it shocks
one."

Severity towards the poor was, in Dr. Johnson's opinion (as is visible in
his "Life of Addison" particularly), an undoubted and constant attendant
or consequence upon Whiggism; and he was not contented with giving them
relief, he wished to add also indulgence. He loved the poor as I never
yet saw any one else do, with an earnest desire to make them happy. "What
signifies," says some one, "giving halfpence to common beggars? they only
lay it out in gin or tobacco." "And why should they be denied such
sweeteners of their existence?" says Johnson; "it is surely very savage
to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for
our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow
without gilding; yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still barer,
and are not ashamed to show even visible displeasure if ever the bitter
taste is taken from their mouths." In consequence of these principles he
nursed whole nests of people in his house, where the lame, the blind, the
sick, and the sorrowful found a sure retreat from all the evils whence
his little income could secure them: and commonly spending the middle of
the week at our house, he kept his numerous family in Fleet Street upon a
settled allowance; but returned to them every Saturday, to give them
three good dinners, and his company, before he came back to us on the
Monday night--treating them with the same, or perhaps more ceremonious
civility than he would have done by as many people of fashion--making the
Holy Scriptures thus the rule of his conduct, and only expecting
salvation as he was able to obey its precepts.

While Dr. Johnson possessed, however, the strongest compassion for
poverty or illness, he did not even pretend to feel for those who
lamented the loss of a child, a parent, or a friend. "These are the
distresses of sentiment," he would reply, "which a man who is really to
be pitied has no leisure to feel. The sight of people who w