One day in 1739 Mr. Hogarth, who painted pictures, was
visiting Mr. Samuel Richardson, who wrote novels, when, as he was talking, " he perceived a person standing at a window in the room, shaking his head, and rolling himself about in a strange ridiculous manner. He concluded that he was an ideot, whom his relatives had put under the care of Mr. Richardson." Suddenly the ideot began to speak, and he spoke very well indeed—which was not surprising, since his name was Samuel Johnson. The point is that this hap- pened at the Grange, Mr. Richardson's country villa at Fulham, at which Dr. Johnson was a frequent visitor, and that the Fulham Borough Council, in a deplorably vandalistic mood, is proposing to pull down this historic Queen Anne house (Burne- Jones lived and painted there from 1867 to 1898) and, apparently plant a pile of flats on the site of the house and its large garden, which happens to be the only open space in the neighbourhood. It would be. possible for Mr: Macmillan to schedule the Grange as a historic house, which it unquestion- ably is, and so save it from demolition. Why not ?
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