e _taken up my bed and walked_, in order to have delivered
that opinion at the Council-Board.' Mr. Langton, who was present,
mentioned this to Johnson, who observed, 'Now, Sir, we see that he took
these words as he found them; without considering, that though the
expression in Scripture, _take up thy bed and walk_[979], strictly
suited the instance of the sick man restored to health and strength, who
would of course be supposed to carry his bed with him, it could not be
proper in the case of a man who was lying in a state of feebleness, and
who certainly would not add to the difficulty of moving at all, that of
carrying his bed.'

When I pointed out to him in the newspaper one of Mr. Grattan's animated
and glowing speeches, in favour of the freedom of Ireland, in which this
expression occurred (I know not if accurately taken): 'We will
persevere, till there is not one link of the English chain left to clank
upon the rags of the meanest beggar in Ireland;' 'Nay, Sir, (said
Johnson,) don't you perceive that _one_ link cannot clank?'

Mrs. Thrale has published[980], as Johnson's, a kind of parody or
counterpart of a fine poetical passage in one of Mr. Burke's speeches on
American Taxation. It is vigorously but somewhat coarsely executed; and
I am inclined to suppose, is not quite correctly exhibited. I hope he
did not use the words _'vile agents'_ for the Americans in the House of
Parliament; and if he did so, in an extempore effusion, I wish the lady
had not committed it to writing[981].

Mr. Burke uniformly shewed Johnson the greatest respect; and when Mr.
Townshend, now lord Sydney, at a period when he was conspicuous in
opposition, threw out some reflection in parliament upon the grant of a
pension to a man of such political principles as Johnson; Mr. Burke,
though then of the same party with Mr. Townshend, stood warmly forth in
defence of his friend, to whom, he justly observed, the pension was
granted solely on account of his eminent literary merit. I am well
assured, that Mr. Townshend's attack upon Johnson was the occasion of
his 'hitching in a rhyme[982];' for, that in the original copy of
Goldsmith's character of Mr. Burke, in his _Retaliation_, another
person's name stood in the couplet where Mr. Townshend is now
introduced[983]:--

'Though fraught with all learning kept[984] straining his throat,
To persuade _Tommy Townshend_ to lend him a vote.'

It may be worth remarking, among the _minutiae_