--"Memoir, &c." vol. i. p.66, note, where she adds:--"I have
heard it said, that into whatever company she (Mrs. T.) fell, she
could be the most agreeable person in it."]
On one of her canvassing expeditions, Johnson accompanied her, and a
rough fellow, a hatter by trade, seeing the moralist's hat in a state
of decay, seized it suddenly with one hand, and clapping him on the
back with the other, cried out, "Ah, Master Johnson, this is no time
to be thinking about hats." "No, no, Sir," replied the Doctor, "hats
are of no use now, as you say, except to throw up in the air and
huzzah with;" accompanying his words with the true election halloo.
Thrale had serious thoughts of repaying Johnson's electioneering aid
in kind, by bringing him into Parliament. Sir John Hawkins says that
Thrale had two meetings with the minister (Lord North), who at first
seemed inclined to find Johnson a seat, but eventually
discountenanced the project. Lord Stowell told Mr. Croker that Lord
North did not feel quite sure that Johnson's support might not
sometimes prove rather an incumbrance than a help. "His lordship
perhaps thought, and not unreasonably, that, like the elephant in the
battle, he was quite as likely to trample down his friends as his
foes." Flood doubted whether Johnson, being long used to sententious
brevity and the short flights of conversation, would have succeeded
in the expanded kind of argument required in public speaking. Burke's
opinion was, that if he had come early into Parliament, he would have
been the greatest speaker ever known in it.
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