Turk's Head, in Gerrard-street, Soho, one evening in the week, and
usually remained together till a late hour. The society was afterwards
extended, so as to comprise a large number of those who were most
eminent, either for their learning or their station in life, and the
place of meeting has been since at different times changed to other
parts of the town, nearer to the Parliament House, or to the usual
resorts of gaiety. A club was the delight of Johnson. We lose some of
our awe for him, when we contemplate him as mimicked by his old scholar
Garrick, in the act of squeezing a lemon into the punch-bowl, and
asking, as he looks round the company, in his provincial accent, of
which he never got entirely rid, "Who's for _poonch_?" If there was any
thing likely to gratify him more than a new club, it was the public
testimony of respect from a learned body; and this he received from
Trinity College, Dublin, in a diploma for the degree of Doctor of Laws,
an honour the more flattering, as it came without solicitation.

At the beginning of 1766, his faithful biographer, James Boswell, who
had known him for three years, found him in a good house in Johnson's
court, Fleet-street, to which he had removed from lodgings in the
Temple. By the advice of his physician, he had now begun to abstain from
wine, and drank only water or lemonade. He had brought two companions
into his new dwelling, such as few other men would have chosen to
enliven their solitude. On the ground floor was Miss Anna Williams,
daughter of Zechariah Williams, a man who had practised physic in Wales,
and, having come to England to seek the reward proposed by Parliament
for the discovery of the longitude, had been assisted by Johnson in
drawing up an account of the method he had devised. This plan was
printed with an Italian translation, which is supposed to be Baretti's,
on the opposite page; and a copy of the pamphlet, presented by Johnson
to the Bodleian, is deposited in that library. Miss Williams had been a