but to
give some brief selection of Boswell's anecdotes. The task, however, is
a difficult one. It is easy enough to make a selection of the gems of
Boswell's narrative; but it is also inevitable that, taken from their
setting, they should lose the greatest part of their brilliance. We lose
all the quaint semiconscious touches of character which make the
original so fascinating; and Boswell's absurdities become less amusing
when we are able to forget for an instant that the perpetrator is also
the narrator. The effort, however, must be made; and it will be best to
premise a brief statement of the external conditions of the life.

From the time of the pension until his death, Johnson was elevated above
the fear of poverty. He had a pleasant refuge at the Thrales', where
much of his time was spent; and many friends gathered round him and
regarded his utterances with even excessive admiration. He had still
frequent periods of profound depression. His diaries reveal an inner
life tormented by gloomy forebodings, by remorse for past indolence and
futile resolutions of amendment; but he could always escape from himself
to a society of friends and admirers. His abandonment of wine seems to
have improved his health and diminished the intensity of his melancholy
fits. His literary activity, however, nearly ceased. He wrote a few
political pamphlets in defence of Government, and after a long period of
indolence managed to complete his last conspicuous work--the _Lives of
the Poets_, which was published in 1779 and 1781. One other book of some
interest appeared in 1775. It was an account of the journey made with
Boswell to the Hebrides in 1773. This journey was in fact the chief
interruption to the even tenour of his life. He made a tour to Wales
with the Thrales in 1774; and spent a month with them in Paris in 1775.
For the rest of the period he lived chiefly in London or at Streatham,
making occasional trips to Lichfield and Oxford, or paying visits to
Taylor, Langton, and one or two other friends. It was, however, in the
London which he loved so ardently ("a man," he said once, "who is tired
of London is tired of life"), that he was chiefly conspicuous. There he
talked and drank tea illimitably at his friends' houses, or argued and
laid down the law to his disciples collected in a tavern instead of
Academic groves. Especially he was in all his glory at the Club, which
began its meetings in February, 1764, and was afterwards know