The young gentleman was Mr. Thrale’s nephew, Sir John Lade; who was proposed, half in earnest, whilst still a minor, by the Doctor as a fitting mate for the author of “Evelina.”  He married a woman of the town, became a celebrated member of the Four-in-Hand Club, and contrived to waste the whole of a fine fortune before he died.

In “Thraliana” she says:—­“Lady Lade consulted him about her son, Sir John.  ‘Endeavour, Madam,’ said he, ’to procure him knowledge; for really ignorance to a rich man is like fat to a sick sheep, it only serves to call the rooks about him.’  On the same occasion it was that he observed how a mind unfurnished with subjects and materials for thinking can keep up no dignity at all in solitude.  ‘It is,’ says he, ‘in the state of a mill without grist.’”

The attractions of Streatham must have been very strong, to induce Johnson to pass so much of his time away from “the busy hum of men” in Fleet Street, and “the full tide of human existence” at Charing Cross.  He often found fault with Mrs. Thrale for living so much in the country, “feeding the chickens till she starved her understanding.”  Walking in a wood when it rained, she tells us, “was the only rural image he pleased his fancy with; for he would say, after one has gathered the apples in an orchard, one wishes them well baked, and removed to a London eating-house for enjoyment.”  This is almost as bad as the foreigner, who complained that there was no ripe fruit in England but the roasted apples.  Amongst other modes of passing time in the country, Johnson once or twice tried hunting and, mounted on an old horse of Mr. Thrale’s, acquitted himself to the surprise of the “field,” one of whom delighted him by exclaiming, “Why Johnson rides as well, for ought I see, as the most illiterate fellow in England.”  But a trial or two satisfied him—­

  “He thought at heart like courtly Chesterfield,
  Who after a long chase o’er hills, dales, fields,
  And what not, though he rode beyond all price,
  Ask’d next day,’If men ever hunted twice?’”

It is very strange, and very melancholy, was his reflection, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.  The mode of locomotion in which he delighted was the vehicular.  As he was driving rapidly in a postchaise with Boswell, he exclaimed, “Life has not many things better than this.”  On their way from Dr. Taylor’s to Derby in 1777, he said, “If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a postchaise with a pretty woman, but she should be one who could understand me, and would add something to the conversation.”

Mr. Croker attributes his enjoyment to the novelty of the pleasure; his poverty having in early life prevented him from travelling post.  But a better reason is given by Mrs. Thrale: