cene. The truth is that at the root of
the man there was an unfailing spring of human love. One who knew him
very well said that peace and goodwill were the natural emanations of
his heart. All sorts of weakness found a friend in him. He was
markedly kind to children, especially little girls, to servants, to
animals. When he was himself in great poverty he would put pennies in
the hands of the children sleeping on doorsteps in the Strand, as he
walked home in the small hours of the morning. He left most of his
property to his negro servant Frank: and so united a delicate
consideration for Frank's feelings with an affection for his cat Hodge
that he always went out himself to buy oysters for Hodge lest Frank
should think himself insulted by being employed to wait upon a cat.

Nor did this human and social element in him show itself only in such
grave shape as hatred of slavery and tenderness to the poor. His sense
of kinship with other men was, indeed, a serious conviction held on
serious grounds. But it was also the expression of his natural good
nature, and overflowed into {130} the obvious channels of kindly
sociability which come to every man unsought, as well as into these
deeper ones of sympathy which are only found by those who seek them.
Those who know him only through Boswell are in danger of
over-accentuating the graver side of his character. In Boswell's eyes
he was primarily the sage and saint, and though he exhibits him playing
many other parts as well it is on these two that the stress is
especially laid. Other people, notably Fanny Burney, who in his last
years saw a great deal of him at the Thrales', enable us to restore the
balance. She loved and honoured him with an affection and reverence
only short of Boswell's: and her youth, cleverness and charm won
Johnson's heart as no one won it who came so late into his world. Like
Boswell she had a touch of literary genius, and luckily for us she used
it partly to write about Johnson. Hers is the most vivid picture we
have of him after Boswell's, and it is notable that she is for ever
laying stress on his gaiety. The seriousness is there, and she
thoroughly appreciated it; but the thing that strikes any one coming to
her from Boswell is the perpetual recurrence of such phrases as "Dr.
Johnson was gaily sociable," "Dr. Johnson was in high spirits, full of
mirth and sport," "Dr. Johnson was in exceeding humour." {131} On one
day in 1778 he appears i