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wanted. Vatis avarus haud facile est animus; and the minister, who shall find leisure from party and faction to carry such a scheme into execution, will, in all probability, be respected by posterity as the Mæcenas of letters.

We now take leave of Dr. Johnson as an author. Four volumes of his Lives of the Poets were published in 1778, and the work was completed in 1781. Should Biography fall again into disuse, there will not always be a Johnson to look back through a century, and give a body of critical and moral instruction. In April 1781, he lost his friend Mr. Thrale. His own words, in his diary, will best tell that melancholy event. 66 On Wednesday the 11th of April, was buried my dear friend Mr. Thrale, who died on "Wednesday the 4th, and with him were "buried many of my hopes and pleasures. "About five, I think, on Wednesday morn

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66

ing he expired. I felt almost the last flut"ter of his pulse, and looked for the last "time upon the face, that, for fifteen years "before, had never been turned upon me "but with respect and benignity. Farewel:

may God, that delighteth in mercy, have

" had

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"had mercy on thee! I had constantly pray"ed for him before his death. The decease "of him, from whose friendship I had ob"tained many opportunities of amusement, "and to whom I turned my thoughts as to

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a refuge from misfortunes, has left me heavy. But my business is with myself."From the close of his last work, the malady that persecuted him through life came upon him with alarming severity, and his constitution declined apace. In 1782 his old friend Levet expired without warning, and without a groan. Events like these reminded Johnson of his own mortality. He continued his visits to Mrs. Thrale at Streatham, to the 7th day of October, 1782, when having first composed a prayer for the happiness of a family with whom he had for many years enjoyed the pleasures and comforts of life, he removed to his own house in town. He says he was up early in the morning, and read fortuitously in the Gospel, which was his parting use of the library. The merit of the family is manifested by the sense he had of it, and we see his heart overflowing with gratitude. He leaves the place with regret, and casts a lingering look behind.

The

The few remaining occurrences may be soon dispatched. In the month of June, 1783, Johnson had a paralytic stroke, which affected his speech only. He wrote to Dr. Taylor of Westminster; and to his friend Mr. Allen, the printer, who lived at the next door. Dr. Brocklesby arrived in a short time, and by his care, and that of Dr. Heberden, Johnson soon recovered. During his illness the writer of this narrative visited him, and found him reading Dr. Watson's Chemistry. Articulating with difficulty, he said, "From this book, he who knows nothing may learn a great deal; and he who "knows, will be pleased to find his knowledge recalled to his mind in a manner

66

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highly pleasing." In the month of August he set out for Lichfield, on a visit to Mrs. Lucy Porter, the daughter of his wife by her first husband; and in his way back paid his respects to Dr. Adams at Oxford. Mrs. Williams died at his house in Bolt-court in the month of September, during his absence. This was another shock to a mind like his, ever agitated by the thoughts of futurity. The contemplation of his own approaching

end

end was constantly before his eyes; and the prospect of death, he declared, was terrible. For many years, when he was not disposed to enter into the conversation going forward, whoever sat near his chair, might hear him repeating, from Shakspeare,

Ay, but to die and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod, and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods

And from Milton,

Who would lose,

For fear of pain, this intellectual being?

By the death of Mrs. Williams he was left in a state of destitution, with nobody but Frank, his black servant, to sooth his anxious moments. In November 1783, he was swelled from head to foot with a dropsy. Dr. Brocklesby, with that benevolence with which he always assists his friends, paid his visits with assiduity. The medicines prescribed were so efficacious, that in a few days, Johnson, while he was offering up his prayers,

was

was suddenly obliged to rise, and, in the course of the day, discharged twenty pints of

water.

Johnson, being eased of his dropsy, began to entertain hopes that the vigour of his constitution was not entirely broken. For the sake of conversing with his friends, he established a conversation club, to meet on every Wednesday evening; and, to serve a man whom he had known in Mr. Thrale's houshold for many years, the place was fixed at his house in Essex-street near the Temple. To answer the malignant remarks of Sir John Hawkins on this subject, were a wretched waste of time. Professing to be Johnson's friend, that biographer has raised more objections to his character, than all the enemies of that, excellent man. Sir John had a root of bitterness that put rancours in the vessel of his peace. Fielding, he says, was the inventor of a cant phrase, Goodness of heart, which means little more than the virtue of a horse or a dog. He should have known that kind affections are the essence of virtue; they are the will of God implanted in our

nature,

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