“That is true of my Lord Chesterfield,” replied the earl, who found it enchanting to recall these friends of his youth with whom he had lived in close intimacy, “and his manners revealed the man. He had also a monstrous pretty wit. There is a great, lumbering fellow of prodigious learning, one Samuel Johnson, with whom my Lord Chesterfield has become most friendly. I never saw this Johnson myself, for he is much younger than the men of whom we are speaking; but I hear from London that he is a wonder of learning, and although almost indigent will not accept aid from his friends, but works manfully for the booksellers. He has described my Lord Chesterfield as ‘a wit among lords, and a lord among wits.’ I heard something of this Dr. Johnson, in a late letter from London, that I think most praiseworthy, and affording a good example to the young. His father, it seems, was a bookseller at Lichfield, where on market-days he would hire a stall in the market for the sale of his wares. One market-day, when Samuel was a youth, his father, being ill and unable to go himself, directed him to fit up the book-stall in the market and attend it during the day. The boy, who was otherwise a dutiful son, refused to do this. Many years afterwards, his father being dead, and Johnson, being as he is in great repute for learning, was so preyed upon by remorse for his undutiful conduct that he went to Lichfield and stood bareheaded in the market-place, before his father’s old stall, for one whole market-day, as an evidence of his sincere penitence. I hear that some of the thoughtless jeered at him, but the better class of people respected his open acknowledgment of his fault, the more so as he was in a higher worldly position than his father had ever occupied, and it showed that he was not ashamed of an honest parent because he was of a humble class. I cannot think, madam, of that great scholar, standing all day with bare, bowed head, bearing with silent dignity the remarks of the curious, the jeers of the scoffers, without in spirit taking off my hat to him.”