Note 726 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 4)

Johnson (Works, viii. 354) described in 1756 such a companion as he found in Mrs. Williams. He quotes Pope's Epitaph on Mrs. Corbet, and continues:—'I have always considered this as the most valuable of all Pope's epitaphs; the subject of it is a character not discriminated by any shining or eminent peculiarities; yet that which really makes, though not the splendour, the felicity of life, and that which every wise man will choose for his final and lasting companion in the languor of age, in the quiet of privacy, when he departs, weary and disgusted, from the ostentatious, the volatile and the vain. Of such a character which the dull overlook, and the gay despise, it was fit that the value should be made known, and the dignity established.' See ante, i.232.