work as much in my way, as if an artisan should work on the day appropriated for religious rest.  Johnson.  ’Why, Sir, when you are of consequence enough to oppose the practice of consulting upon Sunday, you should do it:  but you may go now.  It is not criminal, though it is not what one should do, who is anxious for the preservation and increase of piety, to which a peculiar observance of Sunday is a great help.  The distinction is clear between what is of moral and what is of ritual obligation.’

On Saturday, May 13, I breakfasted with him by invitation, accompanied by Mr. Andrew Crosbie, a Scotch Advocate, whom he had seen at Edinburgh, and the Hon. Colonel (now General) Edward Stopford, brother to Lord Courtown, who was desirous of being introduced to him.  His tea and rolls and butter, and whole breakfast apparatus were all in such decorum, and his behaviour was so courteous, that Colonel Stopford was quite surprized, and wondered at his having heard so much said of Johnson’s slovenliness and roughness.

I passed many hours with him on the 17th, of which I find all my memorial is, ‘much laughing.’  It should seem he had that day been in a humour for jocularity and merriment, and upon such occasions I never knew a man laugh more heartily.  We may suppose, that the high relish of a state so different from his habitual gloom, produced more than ordinary exertions of that distinguishing faculty of man, which has puzzled philosophers so much to explain.  Johnson’s laugh was as remarkable as any circumstance in his manner.  It was a kind of good humoured growl.  Tom Davies described it drolly enough:  ’He laughs like a rhinoceros.’

’To Bennet Langton, Esq.

’Dear sir,—­I have an old amanuensis in great distress.  I have given what I think I can give, and begged till I cannot tell where to beg again.  I put into his hands this morning four guineas.  If you could collect three guineas more, it would clear him from his present difficulty.  I am, Sir, your most humble servant,

‘May 21, 1775.’

‘Sam.  Johnson.’

After my return to Scotland, I wrote three letters to him.

’To James Boswell, Esq.

’Dear sir,—­I am returned from the annual ramble into the middle counties.  Having seen nothing I had not seen before, I have nothing to relate.  Time has left that part of the island few antiquities; and commerce has left the people no singularities.  I was glad to go abroad, and, perhaps, glad to come home; which is, in other words, I was, I am afraid, weary of being at home, and weary of being abroad.  Is not this the state of life?  But, if we confess this weariness, let us not lament it, for all the wise and all the good say, that we may cure it. . . .

’Mrs. Thrale was so entertained with your Journal,* that she almost read herself blind.  She has a great regard for you.