Besides these humble friends, there was a Mrs. Desmoulins, the daughter of a Lichfield physician.  Johnson had had some quarrel with the father in his youth for revealing a confession of the mental disease which tortured him from early years.  He supported Mrs. Desmoulins none the less, giving house-room to her and her daughter, and making her an allowance of half-a-guinea a week, a sum equal to a twelfth part of his pension.  Francis Barker has already been mentioned, and we have a dim vision of a Miss Carmichael, who completed what he facetiously called his “seraglio.”  It was anything but a happy family.  He summed up their relations in a letter to Mrs. Thrale.  “Williams,” he says, “hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll (Miss Carmichael) loves none of them.”  Frank Barker complained of Miss Williams’s authority, and Miss Williams of Frank’s insubordination.  Intruders who had taken refuge under his roof, brought their children there in his absence, and grumbled if their dinners were ill-dressed.  The old man bore it all, relieving himself by an occasional growl, but reproaching any who ventured to join in the growl for their indifference to the sufferings of poverty.  Levett died in January, 1782; Miss Williams died, after a lingering illness, in 1783, and Johnson grieved in solitude for the loss of his testy companions.  A poem, composed upon Levett’s death, records his feelings in language which wants the refinement of Goldsmith or the intensity of Cowper’s pathos, but which is yet so sincere and tender as to be more impressive than far more elegant compositions.  It will be a fitting close to this brief indication of one side of Johnson’s character, too easily overlooked in Boswell’s pages, to quote part of what Thackeray truly calls the “sacred verses” upon Levett:—­

  Well tried through many a varying year
    See Levett to the grave descend,
  Officious, innocent, sincere,
    Of every friendless name the friend.

  In misery’s darkest cavern known,
    His ready help was ever nigh;
  Where hopeless anguish pour’d his groan,
    And lonely want retired to die.

  No summons mock’d by dull delay,
    No petty gains disdain’d by pride;
  The modest wants of every day,
    The toil of every day supplied.

  His virtues walk’d their narrow round,
    Nor made a pause, nor left a void;
  And sure the eternal Master found
    His single talent well employed.

  The busy day, the peaceful night,
    Unfelt, uncounted, glided by;
  His frame was firm, his eye was bright,
    Though now his eightieth year was nigh.

  Then, with no throbs of fiery pain,
    No cold gradations of decay,
  Death broke at once the vital chain,
    And freed his soul the easiest way.

The last stanza smells somewhat of the country tombstone; but to read the whole and to realize the deep, manly sentiment which it implies, without tears in one’s eyes is to me at least impossible.