blameless her life, that when an oppressive neighbour once endeavoured to
take from her a little field she possessed, he could persuade no attorney
to undertake the cause against a woman so beloved in her narrow circle:
and it is this incident he alludes to in the line of his "Vanity of Human
Wishes," calling her

"The general favourite as the general friend."

Nor could any one pay more willing homage to such a character, though she
had not been related to him, than did Dr. Johnson on every occasion that
offered: his disquisition on Pope's epitaph placed over Mrs. Corbet is a
proof of that preference always given by him to a noiseless life over a
bustling one; but however taste begins, we almost always see that it ends
in simplicity; the glutton finishes by losing his relish for anything
highly sauced, and calls for his boiled chicken at the close of many years
spent in the search of dainties; the connoisseurs are soon weary of Rubens,
and the critics of Lucan; and the refinements of every kind heaped upon
civil life always sicken their possessors before the close of it.

At the age of two years Mr. Johnson was brought up to London by his mother,
to be touched by Queen Anne for the scrofulous evil, which terribly
afflicted his childhood, and left such marks as greatly disfigured a
countenance naturally harsh and rugged, beside doing irreparable damage to
the auricular organs, which never could perform their functions since I
knew him; and it was owing to that horrible disorder, too, that one eye was
perfectly useless to him; that defect, however, was not observable, the
eyes looked both alike. As Mr. Johnson had an astonishing memory, I asked
him if he could remember Queen Anne at all? "He had," he said, "a
confused, but somehow a sort of solemn, recollection of a lady in diamonds,
and a long black hood."