��our friends you know, or our friends must outlive us ; and I see no man that would hesitate about the choice V
Mr. Johnson loved late hours extremely, or more properly hated early ones 2 . Nothing was more terrifying to him than the idea of retiring to bed, which he never would call going to rest, or suffer another to call so. ' I lie down (said he) that my acquaintance may sleep ; but I lie down to endure oppressive misery, and soon rise again to pass the night in anxiety and pain.' By this pathetic manner, which no one ever possessed in so eminent a degree, he used to shock me from quitting his com pany, till I hurt my own health not a little by sitting up with him when I was myself far from well : nor was it an easy matter to oblige him even by compliance, for he always maintained that no one forbore their own gratifications for the sake of pleasing another, and if one did sit up it was probably to amuse one's self. Some right however he certainly had to say so, as he made his company exceedingly entertaining when he had once forced one, by his vehement lamentations and piercing reproofs, not to quit the room, but to sit quietly and make tea for him, as I often did in London till four o'clock in the morn ing 3 . At Streatham indeed I managed better, having always
1 ' He that lives must grow old ; into which the King breaks imme- and he that would rather grow old diately as soon as he is left alone, than die has God to thank for the in- Something like this on less occasions firmities of old age.' Life, iv. 156. every breast has felt. Reflection Horace Walpole writes (Letters, vi. and seriousness rush upon the mind 475) ; ' How often do our griefs upon the separation of a gay corn- become our comforts ! I know what pany, and especially after forced and I wish to-day ; not at all what I shall unwilling merriment.'
wish to-morrow. Sixty says, You did Hawkins records how Johnson,
not wish for me, yet you would like little more than a year before his
to keep me. Sixty is in the right ; death, when his three friends of the
and 1 have not a wordmore to say.' old Ivy Lane Club, who had met to
2 ' Whoever thinks of going to dine at half an hour after three, bed before twelve o'clock,' he said, could not be prevailed upon to stay 'is a scoundrel.' Life, iii. i, n. 2. beyond ten o'clock, 'left them with a
3 In a note on the King's solilo- sigh that seemed to come from his quy in Henry V, Act iv. sc. 1. 1. 247, heart, lamenting that he was retiring he says : ' There is something very to solitude and cheerless medita- striking and solemn in this soliloquy, tion.' Life, iv. 435.
some
�� �
