And this was not the public and vicarious { 127} humanity with which we are too familiar. What he preached to others he practised himself. He loved all life and all the men and women whom he saw living it. It takes one's breath away at first to find the grave moralist of _The Rambler_ coolly saying to Mrs. Thrale and Fanny Burney, "Oh, I loved Bet Flint!" just after he had frankly explained to them that that lady was "habitually a slut and a drunkard and occasionally a thief and a harlot." But the creature was what we call a "character," had had many curious adventures, and had written her life in verse and brought it to Johnson to correct, an offer which he had declined, giving her half a crown instead which she "liked as well." He had, in fact, got below the perhaps superficial slut and harlot to the aboriginal human being, and that once arrived at he never forgot it. Nor did he need the kindly humours of old acquaintance to enable him to discover it. No moral priggishness dried up the tenderness with which he regarded the most forlorn specimens of humanity. Boswell tells this story. "Coming home late one night he found a poor woman lying in the street, so much exhausted that she could not walk: he took her upon his back and carried her to his house, where he discovered that she was one of those wretched females who had fallen into the lowest { 128} state of vice, poverty and disease. Instead of harshly upbraiding her he had her taken care of with all tenderness for a long time at considerable expense till she was restored to health, and endeavoured to put her into a virtuous way of living." Like Mr. Gladstone, he exposed his own character to suspicion by his kindness to such poor creatures as this. His heart was always open to the miserable, so that Goldsmith said that the fact of being miserable was enough to "ensure the protection of Johnson." Sir John Hawkins says that, when some one asked him how he could bear to have his house full of "necessitous and undeserving people," his reply was, "If I did not assist them no one else would, and they must be lost for want." He always declared that the true test of a nation's civilization was the state of its poor, and specially directed Boswell to report to him how the poor were maintained in Holland. When his mother's old servant lay dying he went to say good-bye to her and prayed with her, while she, as he says, "held up her poor hands as she lay in bed with great fervour." Then, after the prayer, "I kissed her. She told me that to part was the greatest pain that she had ever felt and that she hoped we should meet again in a better place. I expressed, with swelled eyes and { 129} great emotion of tenderness, the same hope. We kissed and parted. I humbly hope to meet again and to part no more."