"
He would not suffer her to be lightly spoken of in his presence, nor
permit his name to be coupled jocularly with hers. "I yesterday told
him," says Boswell, when they were traversing the Highlands, "I was
thinking of writing a poetical letter to him, on his return from
Scotland, in the style of Swift's humorous epistle in the character
of Mary Gulliver to her husband, Captain Lemuel Gulliver, on his
return to England from the country of the Houyhnhnms:--
"'At early morn I to the market haste,
Studious in ev'ry thing to please thy taste.
A curious _fowl_ and _sparagrass_ I chose;
(For I remember you were fond of those:)
Three shillings cost the first, the last seven groats;
Sullen you turn from both, and call for OATS.'
He laughed, and asked in whose name I would write it. I said in Mrs.
Thrale's. He was angry. 'Sir, if you have any sense of decency or
delicacy, you won't do that.' _Boswell_. 'Then let it be in Cole's,
the landlord of the Mitre tavern, where we have so often sat
together.' _Johnson_. 'Ay, that may do.'"
Again, at Inverary, when Johnson called for a gill of whiskey that he
might know what makes a Scotchman happy, and Boswell proposed Mrs.
Thrale as their toast, he would not have _her_ drunk in whiskey.
Peter Pindar has maliciously added to this reproof:--
"We supped most royally, were vastly frisky,
When Johnson ordered up a gill of whiskey.
Taking the glass, says I, 'Here's Mistress Thrale,'
'Drink her in _whiskey_ not,' said he, 'but _ale_.
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