Like too many other men, who are not to be turned from the path of right by pleasure, by lucre or by danger, he mistook the impulses of his pride and resentment for the monitions of conscience, and deceived himself into a belief that, in treating friends and foes with indiscriminate insolence and asperity, he was merely showing his Christian faithfulness and courage.
Burnet, by exhorting him to patience and forgiveness of injuries, made him a mortal enemy.

"Tell His Lordship," said the inflexible priest, "to mind his own business, and to let me look after mine." [386] It soon began to be whispered that Johnson was mad.

He accused Burnet of being the author of the report, and avenged himself by writing libels so violent that they strongly confirmed the imputation which they were meant to refute.

The King, therefore, thought it better to give out of his own revenue a liberal compensation for the wrongs which the Commons had brought to his notice than to place an eccentric and irritable man in a situation of dignity and public trust.

Johnson was gratified with a present of a thousand pounds, and a pension of three hundred a year for two lives.