When
we came within the focus of the Lichfield lamps, 'Now (said he,) we are
getting out of a state of death.' We put up at the Three Crowns, not one
of the great inns, but a good old fashioned one, which was kept by Mr.
Wilkins, and was the very next house to that in which Johnson was
born and brought up, and which was still his own property. We had a
comfortable supper, and got into high spirits. I felt all my Toryism
glow in this old capital of Staffordshire. I could have offered incense
genio loci; and I indulged in libations of that ale, which Boniface, in
The Beaux Stratagem, recommends with such an eloquent jollity.
Next morning he introduced me to Mrs. Lucy Porter, his step-daughter.
She was now an old maid, with much simplicity of manner. She had never
been in London. Her brother, a Captain in the navy, had left her a
fortune of ten thousand pounds; about a third of which she had laid
out in building a stately house, and making a handsome garden, in an
elevated situation in Lichfield.
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