paffed in rotation, he was oftner excluded from, than entitled to enjoy, that pre-eminence which, at all times, and in all convivial affemblies, was confidered as his right,

The more intimate of Johnfon's friends looked on this establishment, both as a forry expedient to kill time, and a degradation of thofe powers which had adminiftered delight to circles, compofed of perfons, of both fexes, diftinguished as well by their rank, as by their talents for polite converfation. It was a mortification to them, to affociate in idea the clink of the tankard, with moral difquifition and literary inveftigation; and many of them were led to question whether that pleasure could be very great, which he had rendered fo cheap: they, however, concealed their fentiments, and, from motives of mere compaffion, fuffered him to enjoy a comfort, which was now become almost the only one of which he was capable; and this he did for the short space of about ten months, when the increase of his complaints obliged him to forego it.

I have now brought him to the feventy-fifth year of his age, and the laft of his life, in which two remarkable events occurred, the one whereof gave him great uneafinefs, and the other, though much talked of, little or none. The time I am speaking of, is the year 1784, by about the middle whereof, he was, to appearance, fo well recovered, that both himfelf and his friends hoped, that he had fome years to live. He had recovered from the paralytic ftroke of the last year, to such a degree, that, faving a little difficulty in his articulation, he had no remains of it: he had alfo undergone a flight fit of the gout, and conquered

004

conquered an oppreffion on his lungs, fo as to be able, as himself told me, to run up the whole ftair-cafe of the Royal Academy, on the day of the annual dinner there. In fhort, to fuch a degree of health was he restored, that he forgot all his complaints: he refumed fitting to Opie for his picture, which had been begun the year before, but, I believe, was never finished, and accepted an invitation to the house of a friend, at Afhbourn in Derbyshire, propofing to stay there till towards the end of the fummer, and, in his return, to vifit Mrs. Porter, his daughter-in-law, and others of his friends, at Lichfield.

A few weeks before his fetting out, he was made uneafy by a report, that the widow of his friend Mr. Thrale was about to difpofe of herfelf in marriage to a foreigner, a finger by profeffion, and with him to quit the kingdom. Upon this occafion he took the alarm, and to prevent a degradation of herself, and, what as executor of her husband was more his concern, the desertion of her children, wrote to her, fhe then being at Bath, a letter, a fpurious copy whereof, beginning If you are not already ignominiously married,' is inferted in the Gentleman's Magazine for December 1784. That this letter is fpurious, as to the language, I have Johnson's own authority for faying; but, in refpect of the fentiments, he avowed it, in a declaration to me, that not a sentence of it was his, but yet, that it was an adumbration of one that he wrote upon the occafion. It may, therefore, be fufpected, that fome one who had heard him repeat the contents of the letter, had given it to the public in the form in which it appeared.

What answer was returned to his friendly monition,

I know not, but it feems that it was fucceeded by a letter of greater length, written, as it afterwards appeared, too late to do any good, in which he expreffed an opinion, that the perfon to whom it was addressed had forfeited her fame. The answer to this I have seen : it is written from Bath, and contains an indignant vindication as well of her conduct as her fame, an inhibition of Johnson from following her to Bath, and a farewell, concluding Till you have changed your opinion of let us converse no more.'

C

In this tranfaction, Johnfon feemed to have forgotten the ftory of the Ephefian Matron, related by Petronius, but was, by this time, convinced that, in his endeavours to prevent an attachment, which he forefaw would be prejudicial to the interefts of his friend's children, and fix an indelible difgrace on their mother, who was about to abandon them and her country, he had been labouring to hedge in the cuckow. From the ftyle of the letter, a conclufion was to be drawn, that baffled all the powers of reafoning and perfuafion :

One argument fhe fumm'd up all in,

The thing was done, and past recalling*;

which being the cafe, he contented himself with reflecting on what he had done to prevent that which he thought one of the greatest evils that could befall the progeny of his friend, the alienation of the affections of their mother. He looked upon the defertion of children by their parents, and the withdrawing from them that protection, that mental nutriment which, in their youth, they are capable of receiving, the expofing them to the fnares and temptations of * Pope and Swift's Mifcellanies, Phyllis or the Progrefs of love.'

the

the world, and the folicitations and deceits of the artful and defigning, as most unnatural; and, in a letter on the fubject to me, written from Afhbourn, thus delivered his fentiments:

Poor Thrale! I thought that either her virtue or her vice,' [meaning, as I understood, by the former, the love of her children, and, by the latter, her pride,] • would have restrained her from such a marriage, She is now become a fubject for her enemies to exult over, and for her friends, if she has any left, to forget or pity.'

.

In the mention of the above particulars, it is far from my defign to reprehend the conduct of the lady to whom they relate. Being her own mistress, she had a right to difpofe of herself, and is unamenable to any known judicature. Johnfon, in his relation of executor to her husband, as alfo in gratitude to his memory, was under an obligation to promote the welfare of his family. It was alfo his duty, as far as he was able, to avert an evil which threatened their interefts. What he endeavoured, for that purpose, is part of his history, and, as fuch only, I relate it,

While Dr. Johnson was in the country, his friends in town were labouring for his benefit. Mr. Thrale, a fhort time before his death, had meditated a journey to Italy, and formed a party, in which Johnson was included, but the defign never took effect. It was now conceived, by Johnson's friends, that a foreign air would contribute to the restoration of his health; and his inclination concurring with their fentiments, a plan was formed for his visiting the continent, attended with a male-fervant. The only obftacle to the journey was, an apprehenfion, that the expence of it would be greater

greater than his income would bear; and, to get over this difficulty, Sir Joshua Reynolds undertook to folicit an addition of 200l. to his pension, and to that end, applied to lord Thurlow, who, as the public have been fully informed, exerted his endeavours for the purpofe, but the application failing, he declared himself willing, upon the fecurity of that penfion of which Johnfon was in poffeffion, to advance him 500l. This generous offer Johnfon thought proper to decline by a letter, of which the following is an authentic copy, being taken from his own draft now in my hands.

с

My LORD,

After a long and not inattentive observation of mankind, the generofity of your lordship's offer raifes in me not lefs wonder than gratitude. Bounty, fo liberally beftowed, I fhould gladly receive, if my condition made it neceffary, for, to such a mind, who would not be proud to own his obligations? But it has pleafed God to reftore me to fo great a measure of health, that if I fhould now appropriate fo much of a fortune deftined to do good, I could not escape from myfelf the charge of advancing a falfe claim. My journey to the continent, though I once thought it neceffary, was never much encouraged by my phyficians; and I was very defirous

*The offer above-mentioned has, in the first view of it, the appearance rather of a commercial than a gratuitous tranfaction; but Sir Joshua clearly understood at the making it, that lord Thurlow defignedly put it in that form: he was fearful that Johnfon's high fpirit would induce him to reject it as a donation, but thought that, in the way of a loan, it might be accepted.

• that