the news-papers told us you were very ill.' JOHNSON.
'Ay, Sir, they are always telling lies of US OLD FELLOWS.'

Wishing to be present at more of so singular a conversation as that
between two fellow-collegians, who had lived forty years in London
without ever having chanced to meet, I whispered to Mr. Edwards that
Dr. Johnson was going home, and that he had better accompany him now.
So Edwards walked along with us, I eagerly assisting to keep up the
conversation. Mr. Edwards informed Dr. Johnson that he had practised
long as a solicitor in Chancery, but that he now lived in the
country upon a little farm, about sixty acres, just by Stevenage in
Hertfordshire, and that he came to London (to Barnard's Inn, No. 6),
generally twice a week. Johnson appearing to me in a reverie, Mr.
Edwards addressed himself to me, and expatiated on the pleasure of
living in the country. BOSWELL. 'I have no notion of this, Sir. What you
have to entertain you, is, I think, exhausted in half an hour.' EDWARDS.
'What? don't you love to have hope realized? I see my grass, and my
corn, and my trees growing. Now, for instance, I am curious to see if
this frost has not nipped my fruit-trees.' JOHNSON. (who we did not
imagine was attending,) 'You find, Sir, you have fears as well as
hopes.'--So well did he see the whole, when another saw but the half of
a subject.

When we got to Dr. Johnson's house, and were seated in his library, the
dialogue went on admirably. EDWARDS. 'Sir, I remember you would not let
us say PRODIGIOUS at College. For even then, Sir, (turning to me,)
he was delicate in language, and we all feared him.'* JOHNSON. (to
Edwards,) 'From your having practised the law long, Sir, I presume you
must be rich.' EDWARDS. 'No, Sir; I got a good deal of money; but I had
a number of poor relations to whom I gave a great part of it.' JOHNSON.
'Sir, you have been rich in the most valuable sense of the word.'
EDWARDS. 'But I shall not die rich.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, sure, Sir, it is
better to LIVE rich than to DIE rich.' EDWARDS. 'I wish I had continued
at College.' JOHNSON. 'Why do you wish that, Sir?' EDWARDS. 'Because I
think I should have had a much easier life than mine has been. I should
have been a parson, and had a good living, like Bloxam and several
others, and lived comfortably.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, the life of a parson,
of a conscientious clergyman, is not easy. I have always considered a
clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is a