What is
a friend? One who supports you and comforts you, while others do not.
Friendship, you know, Sir, is the cordial drop, "to make the nauseous
draught of life go down:" but if the draught be not nauseous, if it be
all sweet, there is no occasion for that drop.' JOHNSON. 'Many men would
not be content to live so. I hope I should not. They would wish to have
an intimate friend, with whom they might compare minds, and cherish
private virtues. One of the company mentioned Lord Chesterfield, as
a man who had no friend. JOHNSON. 'There were more materials to make
friendship in Garrick, had he not been so diffused.' BOSWELL. 'Garrick
was pure gold, but beat out to thin leaf. Lord Chesterfield was tinsel.'
JOHNSON. 'Garrick was a very good man, the cheerfullest man of his age;
a decent liver in a profession which is supposed to give indulgence
to licentiousness; and a man who gave away, freely, money acquired by
himself. He began the world with a great hunger for money; the son of a
half-pay officer, bred in a family, whose study was to make four-pence
do as much as others made four-pence halfpenny do.
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