clever and ambitious wife.
No event contributed so much to the happiness of his after years.
Thrale was a man of character and understanding, and was not without
scholarly tastes. He at once saw the value of such a friend as
Johnson, lived in the closest intimacy with him for the rest of his
days, and named him executor in his will, which gave Johnson an
opportunity such as he always liked, of mixing in business, and
incidentally also, of saying the best thing that ever was said at the
sale of a brewery. He appeared at the auction, according to the story
told by Lord Lucan, "bustling about with an inkhorn and pen in his
button-hole, like an excise-man; and, on being asked what he really
considered to be the value of the {105} property, answered, 'We are not
here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of
growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.'" The brewery was sold for
135,000 pounds to Mr. Barclay, the founder of the present firm of
Barclay & Perkins, who now put Johnson's head on the labels of their
beer bottles. But it was not so much on the silent and busy Thrale
himself as on his wife, a quick and clever woman fond of literary
society, that the visible burden, honour and pleasure of the long
friendship with Johnson fell. Till the breach caused by her second
marriage just before he died no one had so much of his society as Mrs.
Thrale. She soon became "my mistress" to him, an adaptation of his
from the "my master" which was her phrase for her husband. And for
him, too, Thrale was "my master." A somewhat masterful servant, no
doubt, to them both, but he loved them sincerely and was deeply
grateful for their kindness. He lived at their house at Streatham as
much as he liked, and had his own room reserved for him both there and
at their London house. At Streatham he sometimes remained for several
months, and it is chiefly there that Boswell's only rival, Fanny
Burney, saw him. It may be said that the Thrales' house was more of a
home to him than anything else he ever knew: it was at {106} least the
only house since his childhood in which he ever lived with children.
There in the garden or in the library he studied and idled and talked
at his ease; there many of his friends gathered round him; there his
wishes were anticipated and his words listened to, sometimes with fear,
sometimes with amusement, sometimes with reverence, always with
affection and almost always with admiration. Well