most forlorn waifs and strays of humanity, were past counting, "A decent provision for the poor," he said, "is the true test of civility"; and he regarded it as the chief distinction of his own age that it had given new examples of charity. Among such examples, others may have been more conspicuous in men's eyes, and more often on their lips; but assuredly few can have been nobler. The eighteenth century had not come to see what the more prosperous classes can and ought to do towards making the lives of the poor brighter; but the feeling which moved Johnson when he met with misery in the London streets was as keen as stirs any worker at the East End to-day, and his benevolence, if less systematic and less refined, was as practical in spirit. Johnson's large sympathies are seen again in his warm appreciation of his friends. Men of the most diverse characters and abilities have received from him a tribute of praise which sets forth some shining quality in each of them. Thus he pronounced David Garrick "the first man in the world for sprightly conversation"; and, in referring to the great actor's death, wrote that it had "eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and diminished the public stock of harmless pleasures." His estimate of the novelist Richardson, whom he somewhat unduly preferred to Fielding, appears in his saying that "Fielding can tell the hour by looking at the clock, whilst Richardson knows how the clock was made." It was through Johnson's good offices that the Vicar of Wakefield passed
