must be severely felt.’  Boswell.  ’I own, Sir, I have not so much feeling for the distress of others, as some people have, or pretend to have:  but I know this, that I would do all in my power to relieve them.’  Johnson.  ’Sir it is affectation to pretend to feel the distress of others, as much as they do themselves.  It is equally so, as if one should pretend to feel as much pain while a friend’s leg is cutting off, as he does.  No, Sir; you have expressed the rational and just nature of sympathy.  I would have gone to the extremity of the earth to have preserved this boy.’

He was soon quite calm.  The letter was from Mr. Thrale’s clerk, and concluded, ‘I need not say how much they wish to see you in London.’  He said, ‘We shall hasten back from Taylor’s.’

Mrs. Lucy Porter and some other ladies of the place talked a great deal of him when he was out of the room, not only with veneration but affection.  It pleased me to find that he was so much beloved in his native city.

Mrs. Aston, whom I had seen the preceding night, and her sister, Mrs. Gastrel, a widow lady, had each a house and garden, and pleasure-ground, prettily situated upon Stowhill, a gentle eminence, adjoining to Lichfield.  Johnson walked away to dinner there, leaving me by myself without any apology; I wondered at this want of that facility of manners, from which a man has no difficulty in carrying a friend to a house where he is intimate; I felt it very unpleasant to be thus left in solitude in a country town, where I was an entire stranger, and began to think myself unkindly deserted; but I was soon relieved, and convinced that my friend, instead of being deficient in delicacy, had conducted the matter with perfect propriety, for I received the following note in his handwriting:  ’Mrs. Gastrel, at the lower house on Stowhill, desires Mr. Boswell’s company to dinner at two.’  I accepted of the invitation, and had here another proof how amiable his character was in the opinion of those who knew him best.  I was not informed, till afterwards, that Mrs. Gastrel’s husband was the clergyman who, while he lived at Stratford upon Avon, where he was proprietor of Shakspeare’s garden, with Gothick barbarity cut down his mulberry-tree, and, as Dr. Johnson told me, did it to vex his neighbours.  His lady, I have reason to believe, on the same authority, participated in the guilt of what the enthusiasts for our immortal bard deem almost a species of sacrilege.

After dinner Dr. Johnson wrote a letter to Mrs. Thrale on the death of her son.  I said it would be very distressing to Thrale, but she would soon forget it, as she had so many things to think of.  Johnson.  ’No, Sir, Thrale will forget it first.  She has many things that she may think of.  He has many things that he must think of.’  This was a very just remark upon the different effect of those light pursuits which occupy a vacant and easy mind, and those serious engagements which arrest attention, and keep us from brooding over grief.