About this time he wrote to Mrs. Lucy Porter, mentioning his bad health, and that he intended a visit to Lichfield.  ’It is, (says he,) with no great expectation of amendment that I make every year a journey into the country; but it is pleasant to visit those whose kindness has been often experienced.’

On April 18, (being Good-Friday,) I found him at breakfast, in his usual manner upon that day, drinking tea without milk, and eating a cross-bun to prevent faintness; we went to St. Clement’s church, as formerly.  When we came home from church, he placed himself on one of the stone-seats at his garden-door, and I took the other, and thus in the open air and in a placid frame of mind, he talked away very easily.  Johnson.  ’Were I a country gentleman, I should not be very hospitable, I should not have crowds in my house.’  Boswell.  ’Sir Alexander Dick tells me, that he remembers having a thousand people in a year to dine at his house:  that is, reckoning each person as one, each time that he dined there.’  Johnson.  ‘That, Sir, is about three a day.’  Boswell.  ’How your statement lessens the idea.’  Johnson.  ’That, Sir, is the good of counting.  It brings every thing to a certainty, which before floated in the mind indefinitely.’

Boswell.  ‘I wish to have a good walled garden.’  Johnson.  ’I don’t think it would be worth the expence to you.  We compute in England, a park wall at a thousand pounds a mile; now a garden-wall must cost at least as much.  You intend your trees should grow higher than a deer will leap.  Now let us see; for a hundred pounds you could only have forty-four square yards, which is very little; for two hundred pounds, you may have eighty-four square yards, which is very well.  But when will you get the value of two hundred pounds of walls, in fruit, in your climate?  No, Sir, such contention with Nature is not worth while.  I would plant an orchard, and have plenty of such fruit as ripen well in your country.  My friend, Dr. Madden, of Ireland, said, that “in an orchard there should be enough to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot upon the ground.”  Cherries are an early fruit, you may have them; and you may have the early apples and pears.’  Boswell.  ’We cannot have nonpareils.’  Johnson.  ’Sir, you can no more have nonpareils than you can have grapes.’  Boswell.  ‘We have them, Sir; but they are very bad.’  Johnson.  ’Nay, Sir, never try to have a thing merely to shew that you cannot have it.  From ground that would let for forty shillings you may have a large orchard; and you see it costs you only forty shillings.  Nay, you may graze the ground when the trees are grown up; you cannot while they are young.’  Boswell.  ’Is not a good garden a very common thing in England, Sir?’ Johnson.  ’Not so common, Sir, as you imagine.  In Lincolnshire there is hardly an orchard; in Staffordshire very little fruit.’