Page:Rupert Brooke and the Intellectual Imagination, Walter de la Mare, 1919.djvu/9



evening in 1766, Dr Johnson being then in the fifty-seventh year of his age, his friends, Boswell and Goldsmith, called on him at his lodgings in Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, with the intention of persuading him to sup with them at the Mitre. But though he was proof against their cajoleries, he was by no means averse from a talk. With true hospitality, since he had himself, we are told, become a water-drinker, he called for a bottle of port. This his guests proceeded to discuss. While they sipped, the three of them conversed on subjects no less beguiling than play-going and poetry.

Goldsmith ventured to refer to the deplorable fact that his old friend and former schoolfellow had given up the writing of verses. "Why, sir," replied Johnson, "our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child's rattle.... As we advance in the journey of life, we drop some of the things which have pleased us; whether it be that we are fatigued and don't 3