��bottom and so they call it Palm-mira' Seeing however that the lad thought him serious, and thanked him for the informa tion, he undeceived him very gently indeed ; told him the history, geography, and chronology of Tadmor in the wilderness, with every incident that literature could furnish I think, or eloquence express, from the building of Solomon's palace to the voyage of Dawkins and Wood z .
On another occasion, when he was musing over the fire in our drawing-room at Streatham, a young gentleman called to him suddenly, and I suppose he thought disrespectfully, in these words : Mr. Johnson, Would you advise me to marry ? ' I would advise no man to marry, Sir (returns for answer in a very angry tone Dr. Johnson), who is not likely to propagate under standing ; ' and so left the room 2 . Our companion looked confounded, and I believe had scarce recovered the consciousness of his own existence, when Johnson came back, and drawing his chair among us, with altered looks and a softened voice, joined in the general chat, insensibly led the conversation to the subject of marriage, where he laid himself out in a dissertation so useful, so elegant, so founded on the true knowledge of human life, and so adorned with beauty of sentiment, that no one ever
1 Horace Walpole makes the fol- 2 The young gentleman was Mr. lowing use of this anecdote (Letters, Thrale's nephew, Sir John Lade, ix. 48) : ' In fact the poor man is to on whom Johnson wrote some lines be pitied : he was mad, and his on his coming of age. Ib. iv. 413 ; disciples did not find it out, but have Letters, ii. 190. According to Mr. unveiled all his defects; nay, have Hayward 'he married a woman of exhibited all his brutalities as wit, and the town, and contrived to waste the his lowest conundrums as humour. whole of a fine fortune before he Judge ! The Piozzi relates that, a died.' Hayward's Piozzi, i. 78. young man asking him where Pal- In the Sporting Magazine for 1796, myra was, he replied, " In Ireland ; p. 162, is the following entry : ' An- it was a bog planted with palm- other of Sir John Lade's estates is trees." . . . What will posterity think under the hammer j the money arising of us when it reads what an idol we from which has been long appro- adored?' priated; .200,000 have indiscreetly
For 'Jamaica Dawkins' and the slipped through this baronet's fingers
troop of Turkish horse which he since he became possessed of his
hired to guard him and Wood on property.' He became of age in
their way to Palmyra see Life, iv. 1780. Letters, ii. 191, . I. See also
126. post, p. 281.
recollected
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