Whiggism. Says Garrick to him one day, "Why did not you make me a Tory,
when we lived so much together? You love to make people Tories." "Why,"
says Johnson, pulling a heap of halfpence from his pocket, "did not the
king make these guineas?"

Of Mr. Johnson's Toryism the world has long been witness, and the political
pamphlets written by him in defence of his party are vigorous and elegant.
He often delighted his imagination with the thoughts of having destroyed
Junius, an anonymous writer who flourished in the years 1769 and 177O, and
who kept himself so ingeniously concealed from every endeavour to detect
him that no probable guess was, I believe, ever formed concerning the
author's name, though at that time the subject of general conversation.
Mr. Johnson made us all laugh one day, because I had received a remarkably
fine Stilton cheese as a present from some person who had packed and
directed it carefully, but without mentioning whence it came. Mr. Thrale,
desirous to know who we were obliged to, asked every friend as they came
in, but nobody owned it. "Depend upon it, sir," says Johnson, "it was sent
by JUNIUS."

The "False Alarm," his first and favourite pamphlet, was written at our
house between eight o'clock on Wednesday night and twelve o'clock on
Thursday night. We read it to Mr. Thrale when he came very late home from
the House of Commons; the other political tracts followed in their order.
I have forgotten which contains the stroke at Junius, but shall for ever
remember the pleasure it gave him to have written it. It was, however, in
the year 1775 that Mr. Edmund Burke made the famous speech in Parliament
that struck even foes with admiration, and friends with delight. Among the
nameless thousands who are contented to echo those praises they have not
skill to invent, _I_ ventured, before Dr. Johnson himself, to applaud with
rapture the beautiful passage in it concerning Lord Bathurst and the Angel,