's disappointment." "She will suffer as much, perhaps,"
said he, "as your horse did when your cow miscarried." I professed
myself sincerely grieved when accumulated distresses crushed Sir George
Colebrook's family; and I was so. "Your own prosperity," said he, "may
possibly have so far increased the natural tenderness of your heart, that
for aught I know you _may_ be a _little sorry_; but it is sufficient for
a plain man if he does not laugh when he sees a fine new house tumble
down all on a sudden, and a snug cottage stand by ready to receive the
owner, whose birth entitled him to nothing better, and whose limbs are
left him to go to work again with."

I tried to tell him in jest that his morality was easily contented, and
when I have said something as if the wickedness of the world gave me
concern, he would cry out aloud against canting, and protest that he
thought there was very little gross wickedness in the world, and still
less of extraordinary virtue. Nothing, indeed, more surely disgusted Dr.
Johnson than hyperbole; he loved not to be told of sallies of excellence,
which he said were seldom valuable, and seldom true. "Heroic virtues,"
said he, "are the bons mots of life; they do not appear often, and when
they do appear are too much prized, I think, like the aloe-tree, which
shoots and flowers once in a hundred years. But life is made up of
little things; and that character is the best which does little but
repeated acts of beneficence; as that conversation is the best which
consists in elegant and pleasing thoughts expressed in natural and
pleasing terms. With regard to my own notions of moral virtue,"
continued he, "I hope I have not lost my sensibility of wrong; but I
hope, likewise, that I have lived long enough in the world to prevent me
from expecting to find any action of which both the original motive and
all the parts were good."

The piety of Dr. Johnson was exemplary and edifying; he was punctiliously
exact to perform every public duty enjoined by the Church, and his spirit
of devotion had an energy that affected all who ever saw him pray in
private. The coldest and most languid hearer of the Word must have felt
themselves animated by his manner of reading the Holy Scriptures; and to
pray by his sick-bed required strength of body as well as of mind, so
vehement were his manners, and his tones of voice so pathetic. I have
many times made it my request to Heaven that I might be spared the sight