is
hand before it. The pair then joined in begging Johnson to leave his
solitary abode, and come to them at their country-house at Streatham. He
complied, and for the next sixteen years a room was set apart for him,
both at Streatham and in their house in Southwark. He passed a large
part of his time with them, and derived from the intimacy most of the
comfort of his later years. He treated Mrs. Thrale with a kind of
paternal gallantry, her age at the time of their acquaintance being
about twenty-four, and his fifty-five. He generally called her by the
playful name of "my mistress," addressed little poems to her, gave her
solid advice, and gradually came to confide to her his miseries and
ailments with rather surprising frankness. She flattered and amused him,
and soothed his sufferings and did something towards humanizing his
rugged exterior. There was one little grievance between them which
requires notice. Johnson's pet virtue in private life was a rigid regard
for truth. He spoke, it was said of him, as if he was always on oath. He
would not, for example, allow his servant to use the phrase "not at
home," and even in the heat of conversation resisted the temptation to
give point to an anecdote. The lively Mrs. Thrale rather fretted against
the restraint, and Johnson admonished her in vain. He complained to
Boswell that she was willing to have that said of her, which the best of
mankind had died rather than have said of them. Boswell, the faithful
imitator of his master in this respect, delighted in taking up the
parable. "Now, madam, give me leave to catch you in the fact," he said
on one occasion; "it was not an old woman, but an old man whom I
mentioned, as having told me this," and he recounts his check to the
"lively lady" with intense complacency. As may be imagined, Boswell and
Mrs. Thrale did not love each other, in spite of the well-meant efforts
of the sage to bring about a friendly feeling between his disciples.

It is time to close this list of friends with the inimitable Boswell.
James Boswell, born in 1740, was the eldest son of a Whig laird and lord
of sessions. He had acquired some English friends at the Scotch
universities, among whom must be mentioned Mr. Temple, an English
clergyman. Boswell's correspondence with Temple, discovered years after
his death by a singular chance, and published in 1857, is, after the
Life of Johnson, one of the most curious exhibitions of character in the
language. Boswe