Johnson was generally melancholy, the result of his miserable health to a great extent. Yet his pessimism never affected his wonderfully tender heart. Of his pension he barely spent a third on himself. His house became, after the death of his wife, the haven for a variety of unfortunate and homeless people, and there lived in it Miss Williams, a blind lady, whose temper was not sweet; Levett, a waiter, who had become a quack doctor; Mrs. Desmoulins, and her daughter, old Lichfield acquaintances, and a certain Miss Carmichael. Needless to say there was very little peace in that household, and the poor old Doctor often dreaded going home. "Williams hates everybody," he wrote to his really good friends, the Thrales. "Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll Carmichael loves none of them." And yet this "rugged old giant," as he has been called, provided for them all, and for many others who came and went at their will, and who grumbled if everything was not exactly to their liking. As his bodily sufferings increased, he nerved himself to face the end with a touchingly childlike confidence. His thoughts wandered back to his wife. "We have been parted thirty years," he said. "Perhaps she is now praying for me. God help me. God, Thou art merciful, hear my prayers, and enable me to trust in Thee." Years before, when wandering about the dark aisles with Goldsmith, he had pointed to the sleeping figures around, saying, "And our names may perhaps be mixed with theirs." So now he was delighted when, in answer to his question, he was told that he would be buried in Westminster Abbey. "Do not give me any more physic," he asked the doctor at the very last; "I desire to render up my soul to God unclouded." His funeral was a very quiet one, in great contrast to Garrick’s, but his executors felt that "a cathedral service with lights and music" would have been too costly; as it was, the Dean and Chapter charged high fees, and the expenses came to more than two hundred pounds. But Boswell assures us that a "respectable number of his friends attended," and though the Abbey holds many a greater name than that of Samuel Johnson, few that sleep there carried a braver, kindlier heart throughout a life of constant suffering.