sometimes, unfortunately for him, of the potable kind. He was once
entrapped into a queer marriage, and Johnson had to arrange a separation
from his wife. Johnson, it seems, had a good opinion of his medical
skill, and more or less employed his services in that capacity. He
attended his patron at his breakfast; breakfasting, said Percy, "on the
crust of a roll, which Johnson threw to him after tearing out the
crumb." The phrase, it is said, goes too far; Johnson always took pains
that Levett should be treated rather as a friend than as a dependant.

Besides these humble friends, there was a Mrs. Desmoulins, the daughter
of a Lichfield physician. Johnson had had some quarrel with the father
in his youth for revealing a confession of the mental disease which
tortured him from early years. He supported Mrs. Desmoulins none the
less, giving house-room to her and her daughter, and making her an
allowance of half-a-guinea a week, a sum equal to a twelfth part of his
pension. Francis Barker has already been mentioned, and we have a dim
vision of a Miss Carmichael, who completed what he facetiously called
his "seraglio." It was anything but a happy family. He summed up their
relations in a letter to Mrs. Thrale. "Williams," he says, "hates
everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams;
Desmoulins hates them both; Poll (Miss Carmichael) loves none of them."
Frank Barker complained of Miss Williams's authority, and Miss Williams
of Frank's insubordination. Intruders who had taken refuge under his
roof, brought their children there in his absence, and grumbled if their
dinners were ill-dressed. The old man bore it all, relieving himself by
an occasional growl, but reproaching any who ventured to join in the
growl for their indifference to the sufferings of poverty. Levett died
in January, 1782; Miss Williams died, after a lingering illness, in
1783, and Johnson grieved in solitude for the loss of his testy
companions. A poem, composed upon Levett's death, records his feelings