In the course of this period, he made a short visit to Lichfield, and
thus communicates his feelings on the occasion, in a letter dated July
20, 1762, to Baretti, his Italian friend, who was then at Milan.

Last winter I went down to my native town, where I found the streets
much narrower and shorter than I thought I had left them, inhabited by
a new race of people, to whom I was very little known. My play-fellows
were grown old, and forced me to suspect that I am no longer young. My
only remaining friend had changed his principles, and was become the
tool of the predominant faction. My daughter-in-law, from whom I
expected most, and whom I met with sincere benevolence, had lost the
beauty and gaiety of youth, without having gained much of the wisdom
of age. I wandered about for five days, and took the first convenient
opportunity of returning to a place, where, if there is not much
happiness, there is at least such a diversity of good and evil, that
slight vexations do not fix upon the heart.

I think in a few weeks to try another excursion; though to what end?
Let me know, my Baretti, what has been the result of your return to
your own country; whether time has made any alteration for the better,
and, whether, when the first rapture of salutation was over, you did
not find your thoughts confessed their disappointment.

Henceforward Johnson had no longer to struggle with the evils of
extreme poverty. A pension of £300 was granted to him, in 1762, by His
Majesty. Before his acceptance of it, in answer to a question put by him
to the Earl of Bute, in these words, "Pray, my Lord, what am I to do for
the pension?" he was assured by that nobleman that it was not given him
for any thing he was to do, but for what he had done. The definition he