d a drunkard and occasionally a thief and a
harlot." But the creature was what we call a "character," had had many
curious adventures, and had written her life in verse and brought it to
Johnson to correct, an offer which he had declined, giving her half a
crown instead which she "liked as well." He had, in fact, got below
the perhaps superficial slut and harlot to the aboriginal human being,
and that once arrived at he never forgot it. Nor did he need the
kindly humours of old acquaintance to enable him to discover it. No
moral priggishness dried up the tenderness with which he regarded the
most forlorn specimens of humanity. Boswell tells this story. "Coming
home late one night he found a poor woman lying in the street, so much
exhausted that she could not walk: he took her upon his back and
carried her to his house, where he discovered that she was one of those
wretched females who had fallen into the lowest {128} state of vice,
poverty and disease. Instead of harshly upbraiding her he had her
taken care of with all tenderness for a long time at considerable
expense till she was restored to health, and endeavoured to put her
into a virtuous way of living." Like Mr. Gladstone, he exposed his own
character to suspicion by his kindness to such poor creatures as this.
His heart was always open to the miserable, so that Goldsmith said that
the fact of being miserable was enough to "ensure the protection of
Johnson." Sir John Hawkins says that, when some one asked him how he
could bear to have his house full of "necessitous and undeserving
people," his reply was, "If I did not assist them no one else would,
and they must be lost for want." He always declared that the true test
of a nation's civilization was the state of its poor, and specially
directed Boswell to report to him how the poor were maintained in
Holland. When his mother's old servant lay dying he went to say
good-bye to her and prayed with her, while she, as he says, "held up
her poor hands as she lay in bed with great fervour." Then, after the
prayer, "I kissed her. She told me that to part was the greatest pain
that she had ever felt and that she hoped we should meet again in a
better place. I expressed, with swelled eyes and {129} great emotion
of tenderness, the same hope. We kissed and parted. I humbly hope to
meet again and to part no more."

Let all pictures of Johnson as a harsh and arrogant bully fade away
before this touching little s