o a
London eating-house for enjoyment."' See _ante_, pp. 132, note 1, 141,
note 2, 333, note i, and 346, note i, for Johnson's descriptions of
scenery. Passages in his letters shew that he had some enjoyment of
country life. Thus he writes:--'I hope to see standing corn in some part
of the earth this summer, but I shall hardly smell hay or suck clover
flowers.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii. 140. 'What I shall do next I know not;
all my schemes of rural pleasure have been some way or other
disappointed.' _Ib._ p. 372. 'I hope Mrs. ------ when she came to her
favourite place found her house dry, and her woods growing, and the
breeze whistling, and the birds singing, and her own heart dancing.'
_Ib._ p. 401. In this very trip to Wales, after describing the high bank
of a river 'shaded by gradual rows of trees,' he writes:--'The gloom,
the stream, and the silence generate thoughtfulness.' _Post,_ p. 454.

[A] Mr. Throckmorton the owner.

[1201] In the MS. in Dr. Johnson's handwriting, he has first entered in
his diary, 'The old Clerk had great appearance of joy at seeing his
Mistress, and foolishly said that he was now willing to die:' he
afterwards wrote in a separate column, on the same leaf, under the head
of _notes and omissions,_ 'He had a crown;' and then he appears to have
read over his diary at a future time, and interlined the paragraph with
the words 'only'--'given him by my Mistress,' which is written in ink of
a different colour. DUPPA. 'If Mr. Duppa,' wrote Mrs. Piozzi, 'does not
send me a copy of Johnson's _Diary,_ he is as shabby as it seems our
Doctor thought me, when I gave but a crown to the old clerk. The poor
clerk had probably never seen a crown in his possession before. Things
were very distant A.D. 1774 from what they are 1816.' Hayward's
_Piozzi,_ ii. 178. Mrs. Piozzi writes as if Johnson's censure had been
passed in 1816 and not in 1774.

[1202] Mrs. Piozzi has the following MS. note on this:--'He said I
flattered the people to whose houses we went. I was saucy, and said I
was obliged to be civil for two, meaning himself and me. He replied
nobody would thank me for compliments they did not understand. At
Gwaynynog _he_ was flattered, and was happy of course.' Hayward's
_Piozzi,_ i. 75. Sept. 21, 1778. _Mrs. Thrale._ 'I remember, Sir, when
we were travelling in Wales, how you called me to account for my
civility to the people. "Madam," you said, "let me have no more of this
idle commendation of nothing. W