when he had got money he was very liberal.' I presumed to animadvert on his eulogy on Garrick, in his _Lives of the Poets_. 'You say, Sir, his death eclipsed the gaiety of nations.' _Johnson_: 'I could not have said more or less. It is the truth: _eclipsed_, not _extinguished_; and his death _did_ eclipse; it was like a storm.' _Boswell_: 'But why nations? Did his gaiety extend farther than his own nation?' _Johnson_: 'Why, sir, some exaggeration must be allowed. Besides, nations may be said--if we allow the Scotch to be a nation--to have gaiety--which they have not. _You_ are an exception, though. Come, gentlemen, let us candidly admit that there is one Scotchman who is cheerful.' _Beauclerk_: 'But he is a very unnatural Scotchman.' I, however, continued to think the compliment to Garrick hyperbolically untrue. His acting had ceased some time before his death; at any rate he had acted in Ireland but a short time, at an early period of his life, and never in Scotland. I objected also to what appears an anti-climax of praise, when contrasted with the preceding panegyric, 'and diminished the public stock of harmless pleasure!' 'Is not _harmless pleasure_ very tame?' _Johnson_: 'Nay, Sir, harmless pleasure is the highest praise. Pleasure is a word of dubious import; pleasure is, in general, dangerous, and pernicious to virtue; to be able, therefore, to furnish pleasure that is harmless, pleasure pure and unalloyed, is as great a power as man can possess.'" [Illustration: YORK STAIRS AND WATER WORKS.] Johnson was a frequent visitor to Adelphi Terrace, for not only was he on intimate terms with Mr and Mrs Garrick, but another of his friends, Topham Beauclerk, lived there at one time. From 1757 to 1780, there are frequent and most kindly allusions to him in the pages of Boswell. In the former year, he matriculated at Oxford. Here he met another of Johnson's friends--"High, shy, and dry" Bennet Langton, the eminent Greek scholar. Beauclerk was a man of culture and of great knowledge of the world. And he had the good fortune to win the affectionate regard of Dr Johnson. On March 10, 1768, Lady Diana Spencer, eldest daughter of the second Duke of Marlborough, was divorced from her husband, Lord St John and Bolingbroke, and, two days later, she was married to Beauclerk, to whom "she made an excellent wife." Beauclerk died, in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, on March 11, 1780. His extensive library, which was particularly rich in English plays, history, travel, and science, was dispersed by auction in 1781.