brother’s death.’  Macbean[305] asserted that this inexplicable calling was a thing very well known.  Dr. Johnson said, that one day at Oxford, as he was turning the key of his chamber, he heard his mother distinctly call Sam.  She was then at Lichfield; but nothing ensued[306].  This phaenomenon is, I think, as wonderful as any other mysterious fact, which many people are very slow to believe, or rather, indeed, reject with an obstinate contempt.

Some time after this, upon his making a remark which escaped my attention, Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Hall were both together striving to answer him.  He grew angry, and called out loudly, ’Nay, when you both speak at once, it is intolerable.’  But checking himself, and softening, he said, ‘This one may say, though you are ladies.’  Then he brightened into gay humour, and addressed them in the words of one of the songs in The Beggar’s Opera[307]:—­

     ‘But two at a time there’s no mortal can bear.’

‘What, Sir, (said I,) are you going to turn Captain Macheath?’ There was something as pleasantly ludicrous in this scene as can be imagined.  The contrast between Macheath, Polly, and Lucy—­and Dr. Samuel Johnson, blind, peevish Mrs. Williams, and lean, lank, preaching Mrs. Hall, was exquisite.

I stole away to Coachmakers’-hall, and heard the difficult text of which we had talked, discussed with great decency, and some intelligence, by several speakers.  There was a difference of opinion as to the appearance of ghosts in modern times, though the arguments for it, supported by Mr. Addison’s authority[308], preponderated.  The immediate subject of debate was embarrassed by the bodies of the saints having been said to rise, and by the question what became of them afterwards; did they return again to their graves? or were they translated to heaven?  Only one evangelist mentions the fact[309], and the commentators whom I have looked at, do not make the passage clear.  There is, however, no occasion for our understanding it farther, than to know that it was one of the extraordinary manifestations of divine power, which accompanied the most important event that ever happened.

On Friday, April 20, I spent with him one of the happiest days that I remember to have enjoyed in the whole course of my life.  Mrs. Garrick, whose grief for the loss of her husband was, I believe, as sincere as wounded affection and admiration could produce, had this day, for the first time since his death, a select party of his friends to dine with her[310].  The company was Miss Hannah More, who lived with her, and whom she called her Chaplain[311]; Mrs. Boscawen[312], Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr. Burney, Dr. Johnson, and myself.  We found ourselves very elegantly entertained at her house in the Adelphi[313], where I have passed many a pleasing hour with him ’who gladdened life[314].’  She looked well, talked of her husband with complacency, and while she cast her eyes on his portrait, which hung over the chimney-piece, said, that ’death was now the most agreeable object to her[315].’  The very semblance of David Garrick was cheering.  Mr. Beauclerk, with happy propriety, inscribed under that fine portrait of him, which by Lady Diana’s kindness is now the property of my friend Mr. Langton, the following passage from his beloved Shakspeare:—­