In the “Anecdotes” she goes on to say that when she and her husband called on Johnson one morning in Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, he gave way to such an uncontrolled burst of despair regarding the world to come, that Mr. Thrale tried to stop his mouth by placing one hand before it, and desired her to prevail on him to quit his close habitation for a period and come with them to Streatham.  He complied, and took up his abode with them from before Midsummer till after Michaelmas in that year.  During the next sixteen years a room in each of their houses was set apart for him.

The principal difficulty at first was to induce him to live peaceably with her mother, who took a strong dislike to him, and constantly led the conversation to topics which he detested, such as foreign news and politics.  He revenged himself by writing to the newspapers accounts of events which never happened, for the sole purpose of mystifying her; and probably not a few of his mischievous fictions have passed current for history.  They made up their differences before her death, and a Latin epitaph of the most eulogistic order from his pen is inscribed upon her tomb.

It had been well for Mrs. Thrale and her guests if there had existed no more serious objection to Johnson as an inmate.  At the commencement of the acquaintance, he was fifty-six; an age when habits are ordinarily fixed:  and many of his were of a kind which it required no common temper and tact to tolerate or control.  They had been formed at a period when he was frequently subjected to the worst extremities of humiliating poverty and want.  He describes Savage, without money to pay for a night’s lodging in a cellar, walking about the streets till he was weary, and sleeping in summer upon a bulk or in winter amongst the ashes of a glass-house.  He was Savage’s associate on several occasions of the sort.  He told Sir Joshua Reynolds that, one night in particular, when Savage and he walked round St. James’s Square for want of a lodging, they were not at all depressed; but in high spirits, and brimful of patriotism, traversed the square for several hours, inveighed against the minister, and “resolved they would stand by their country.”  Whilst at college he threw away the shoes left at his door to replace the worn-out pair in which he appeared daily.  His clothes were in so tattered a state whilst he was writing for the “Gentleman’s Magazine” that, instead of taking his seat at Cave’s table, he sate behind a screen and had his victuals sent to him.

Talking of the symptoms of Christopher Smart’s madness, he said, “Another charge was that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it.”

His deficiency in this respect seems to have made a lasting impression on his hostess.  Referring to a couplet in “The Vanity of Human Wishes":—­

  “Through all his veins the fever of renown
  Spreads from the strong contagion of the gown,”