A large party had one day been invited to meet the Doctor at Stow- Hill : the dinner waited far beyond the usual hour, and the company were about to sit down, when Johnson appeared at the great gate ; he stood for some time in deep contemplation, and at length began to climb it, and, having succeeded in clear ing it, advanced with hasty strides towards the house. On his arrival Mrs. Gastrel asked him, ' if he had forgotten that there was a small gate for foot passengers by the side of the carriage entrance/ * No, my dear lady, by no means/ replied the Doctor ; ' but I had a mind to try whether I could climb a gate now as I used to do when I was a lad.'
One day Mrs. Gastrel set a little girl to repeat to him Cato's soliloquy, which she went through very correctly. The Doctor, after a pause, asked the child, ' What was to bring Cato to an end ? ' She said, it was a knife. ' No, my deaf, it was not so.' c My aunt Polly said it was a knife.' ' Why, aunt Polly's knife may do t but it was a dagger, my dear V He then asked her the meaning of c bane and antidote 2 ,' which she was unable to give. Mrs. Gastrel said, ' You cannot expect so young a child to know the meaning of such words.' He then said, ' My dear, how many pence are there in sixpence ?' 'I cannot tell, Sir,' was the half- terrified reply. On this, addressing himself to Mrs. Gastrel, he said, * Now, my dear lady, can any thing be more ridiculous than to teach a child Cato's soliloquy, who does not know how many pence there are iii sixpence?'
The ladies at Stow-Hill would occasionally rebuke Dr. Johnson for the indiscriminate exercise of his charity to all who applied
little value did the Society which propriating her verses. C. Dar-
struck a medal in honour of Captain win's Life of Erasmus Darwin,
Cook set upon my poem, thatj while p. 90.
they avowedly presented one to every x 'The soul secured in her exist-
person who had taken public interest ence smiles
in his fate and virtues, they took no At the drawn dagger, and defies
notice of me/ Letters of Anna its point.'
Seivard, iii. 32. It is to be hoped 2 ' Thus am I doubly armed : my
that the medal went to Dr. Darwin, death and life,
whom she had the impudence to My bane and antidote, are both
accuse, on another occasion, of ap- before me.'
for
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