poor to be able to give them.'

Mrs. Thrale disputed with him on the merit of Prior. He attacked him
powerfully; said he wrote of love like a man who had never felt it: his
love verses were college verses; and he repeated the song 'Alexis
shunn'd his fellow swains[229],' &c., in so ludicrous a manner, as to make
us all wonder how any one could have been pleased with such fantastical
stuff. Mrs. Thrale stood to her gun with great courage, in defence of
amorous ditties, which Johnson despised, till he at last silenced her by
saying, 'My dear Lady, talk no more of this. Nonsense can be defended
but by nonsense[230].'

Mrs. Thrale then praised Garrick's talent for light gay poetry; and, as
a specimen, repeated his song in _Florizel and Perdita_, and dwelt with
peculiar pleasure on this line:

'I'd smile with the simple, and feed with the poor[231].'

JOHNSON. 'Nay, my dear Lady, this will never do. Poor David! Smile with
the simple;--What folly is that? And who would feed with the poor that
can help it? No, no; let me smile with the wise, and feed with the
rich.' I repeated this sally to Garrick, and wondered to find his
sensibility as a writer not a little irritated by it. To sooth him, I
observed, that Johnson spared none of us; and I quoted the passage in
Horace[232], in which he compares one who attacks his friends for the sake
of a laugh, to a pushing ox[233], that is marked by a bunch of hay put
upon his horns: '_faenum habet in cornu_.' 'Ay, (said Garrick
vehemently,) he has a whole _mow_ of it.'

Talking of history, Johnson said, 'We may know historical facts to be