“I asked him why he doated on a coach so? and received for answer, that in the first place, the company were shut in with him there; and could not escape, as out of a room; in the next place, he heard all that was said in a carriage, where it was my turn to be deaf; and very impatient was he at my occasional difficulty of hearing.  On this account he wished to travel all over the world:  for the very act of going forward was delightful to him, and he gave himself no concern about accidents, which he said never happened; nor did the running-away of the horses at the edge of a precipice between Vernon and St. Denys in France convince him to the contrary:  ’for nothing came of it,’ he said, ’except that Mr. Thrale leaped out of the carriage into a chalk-pit, and then came up again, looking as white!’ When the truth was, all their lives were saved by the greatest providence ever exerted in favour of three human creatures:  and the part Mr. Thrale took from desperation was the likeliest thing in the world to produce broken limbs and death.”

The drawbacks on his gratification and on that of his fellow travellers were his physical defects, and his utter insensibility to the beauty of nature, as well as to the fine arts, in so far as they were addressed to the senses of sight and hearing.  “He delighted,” says Mrs. Thrale, “no more in music than painting; he was almost as deaf as he was blind; travelling with Dr. Johnson was, for these reasons, tiresome enough.  Mr. Thrale loved prospects, and was mortified that his friend could not enjoy the sight of those different dispositions of wood and water, hill and valley, that travelling through England and France affords a man.  But when he wished to point them out to his companion:  ’Never heed such nonsense,’ would be the reply:  ’a blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another:  let us, if we do talk, talk about something; men and women are my subjects of inquiry; let us see how these differ from those we have left behind.”

It is no small deduction from our admiration of Johnson, and no trifling enhancement of his friends’ kindness in tolerating his eccentricities, that he seldom made allowance for his own palpable and undeniable deficiencies.  As well might a blind man deny the existence of colours, as a purblind man assert that there was no charm in a prospect, or in a Claude or Titian, because he could see none.  Once, by way of pleasing Reynolds, he pretended to lament that the great painter’s genius was not exerted on stuff more durable than canvas, and suggested copper.  Sir Joshua urged the difficulty of procuring plates large enough for historical subjects.  “What foppish obstacles are these!” exclaimed Johnson.  “Here is Thrale has a thousand ton of copper:  you may paint it all round if you will, I suppose; it will serve him to brew in afterwards.  Will it not, Sir?” (to Thrale, who sate by.)

He always “civilised” to Dr. Burney, who has supplied the following anecdote: