CHAP, ix.] THE ARKEST A3TO WHAT PRECEDED IT.
to him a second home, where unaccustomed comforts awaited 1701.
him, and his most familiar friends were invited to please him; j£t~36.
immediately after his first visit, the Thursdays in every week
were set apart for dinner with the Thrales; and before long
there was a " Mr. Johnson's room" both in the Southwark
mansion and the Streatharn villa. Very obvious was the effect
upon him. His melancholy was diverted, and his irregular
habits lessened, all said who observed him closely; but not
the less active were his sympathies still, in the direction of
that Grrub-street world of struggle and disaster, of cock-loft
lodgings and penny-ordinaries, from which he had at last
effected his own escape.
An illustration of this, at the commencement of their
intercourse, much impressed Mrs. Thrale. One day, she
says, he was called abruptly from their house after dinner,
and returning in about three hours, said he had been with
an enraged author, whose landlady pressed him for payment
within doors, while the bailiffs beset him without; that he
was drinking himself drunk with madeira to drown care, and
fretting over a novel which when finished was to be his whole
fortune; but he could not get it done for distraction, nor
could he step out of doors to offer it to sale. Mr. Johnson,
therefore, she continues, set away the bottle, and went to the
bookseller, recommending the performance, and desiring
some immediate relief; which when he brought back to the
writer, the latter called the woman of the house directly to
partake of punch, and pass their time in merriment. " It was
" not," she concludes, " till ten years after, I dare say, that
" something in Doctor Goldsmith's behaviour struck me with
perpetually watching. ' "Nay, then," wisely observed Johnson, " you ought io be
"perpetually watching. It is more from carelessness about truth, than from
" intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world."