various waifs and strays, to whom he gave hospitality and sometimes
support, defending himself by saying that if he did not help them nobody
else would. The head of his household was Miss Williams, who had been a
friend of his wife's, and after coming to stay with him, in order to
undergo an operation for cataract, became a permanent inmate of his
house. She had a small income of some 40_l_. a year, partly from the
charity of connexions of her father's, and partly arising from a little
book of miscellanies published by subscription. She was a woman of some
sense and cultivation, and when she died (in 1783) Johnson said that for
thirty years she had been to him as a sister. Boswell's jealousy was
excited during the first period of his acquaintance, when Goldsmith one
night went home with Johnson, crying "I go to Miss Williams"--a phrase
which implied admission to an intimacy from which Boswell was as yet
excluded. Boswell soon obtained the coveted privilege, and testifies to
the respect with which Johnson always treated the inmates of his family.
Before leaving her to dine with Boswell at the hotel, he asked her what
little delicacy should be sent to her from the tavern. Poor Miss
Williams, however, was peevish, and, according to Hawkins, had been
known to drive Johnson out of the room by her reproaches, and Boswell's
delicacy was shocked by the supposition that she tested the fulness of
cups of tea, by putting her finger inside. We are glad to know that
this was a false impression, and, in fact, Miss Williams, however
unfortunate in temper and circumstances, seems to have been a lady by
manners and education.

The next inmate of this queer household was Robert Levett, a man who had
been a waiter at a coffee-house in Paris frequented by surgeons. They
had enabled him to pick up some of their art, and he set up as an
"obscure practiser in physic amongst the lower people" in London. He
took from them such fees as he could get, including provisions,