lipsed the gaiety
of nations, since he had retired from the stage months previous to his
demise. When will mankind learn that literature is one thing, and sworn
testimony another?

Johnson's relations with Burke were of a more crucial character. The
author of _Rasselas_ and _The English Dictionary_ can never have been
really jealous of Garrick, or in the very least desirous of 'bringing
down the house;' but Burke had done nobler things than that. He had made
politics philosophical, and had at least tried to cleanse them from the
dust and cobwebs of party. Johnson, though he had never sat in the House
of Commons, had yet, in his capacity of an unauthorized reporter, put
into the mouths of honourable members much better speeches than ever came
out of them, and it is no secret that he would have liked to make a
speech or two on his own account. Burke had made many. Harder still to
bear, there were not wanting good judges to say that, in their opinion,
Burke was a better talker than the great Samuel himself. To cap it all,
was not Burke a 'vile Whig'? The ordeal was an unusually trying one.
Johnson emerges triumphant.

Though by no means disposed to hear men made much of, he always listened
to praise of Burke with a boyish delight. He never wearied of it. When
any new proof of Burke's intellectual prowess was brought to his notice,
he would exclaim exultingly, 'Did we not always say he was a great man?'
And yet how admirably did this 'poor scholar' preserve his independence
and equanimity of mind! It was not easy to dazzle the Doctor. What a
satisfactory story that is of Burke showing Johnson over his fine estate
at Beaconsfield, and expatiating in his exuberant style on its
'liberties, privileges, easements, rights, and advantages,' and of the
old Doctor, the tenant of 'a two-pair back' somewhere off Fleet Street,
peering cautiously about, criticising everything, and observing with much
coolness--

'Non equidem invideo, miror magis.'

A friendship like this could be disturbed but by death, and accordingly
we read:

'Mr. Langton one day during Johnson's last illness found Mr. Burke and
four or five more friends sitting with Johnson. Mr. Burke said to
him, "I am afraid, sir, such a number of us may be oppressive to you."
"No, sir," said Johnson, "it is not so; and I must be in a wretched
state indeed when your company would not be a delight to me." Mr.
Burke, in a tremulous voice, exp