'
EDWARDS. 'Don't you eat supper, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir.' EDWARDS. 'For
my part, now, I consider supper as a turnpike through which one must
pass, in order to get to bed[901].'
JOHNSON. 'You are a lawyer, Mr. Edwards. Lawyers know life practically.
A bookish man should always have them to converse with. They have what
he wants.' EDWARDS. 'I am grown old: I am sixty-five.' JOHNSON. 'I shall
be sixty-eight[902] next birth-day. Come, Sir, drink water, and put in for
a hundred.'
Mr. Edwards mentioned a gentleman who had left his whole fortune to
Pembroke College. JOHNSON. 'Whether to leave one's whole fortune to a
College be right, must depend upon circumstances. I would leave the
interest of the fortune I bequeathed to a College to my relations or my
friends, for their lives[903]. It is the same thing to a College, which is
a permanent society, whether it gets the money now or twenty years
hence; and I would wish to make my relations or friends feel the benefit
of it.'
This interview confirmed my opinion of Johnson's most humane and
benevolent heart. His cordial and placid behaviour to an old
fellow-collegian, a man so different from himself; and his telling him
that he would go down to his farm and visit him, showed a kindness of
disposition very rare at an advanced age.
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