tors; and myself, Mr. Strahan, Mr. Langton, Mr. Hoole, Frank, and I believe some others that were about him, went into his bed-chamber to seek it. In our search, I laid my hands on a parchment-covered book, into which I imagined it might have been slipped. Upon opening the book, I found it to be meditations and reflections, in Johnson's own hand-writing; and having been told a day or two before by Frank, that a person (1) formerly intimately connected with his master, a joint proprietor of a newspaper, well known among the booksellers, and of whom Mrs. Williams once told me she had often cautioned him to beware; I say, having been told that this person had lately been very importunate to get access to him, indeed to such a degree as that, when he was told that the doctor was not be seen, he would push his way up stairs; and having stronger reasons than I need here mention, to suspect that this man might find and make an ill use of the book, I put it, and a less of the same kind, into my pocket; at the same time telling those around me, and particularly Mr. Langton and Mr. Strahan, that I had got both, with my reasons for thus securing them. After the ceremony was over, Johnson took me aside, and told me that I had a book of his in my pocket I answered that I had two, and to prevent their falling into the hands of a person who had attempted to force his way into the house, I had done as I conceived a friendly act, but not without telling his friends of it, and also my reasons. He then asked me what ground I had for my suspicion of the man I mentioned: I told him his great importunity to get admittance; and farther, that immediately after a visit which he made me, in the year 1775, I missed a paper of a public nature, and of great importance; and that a day or two after, and before it could be put to its intended use, I saw it in the newspapers. (2)

(1) [Mr. George Steevens.-C.]

(2) As I take no pleasure in the disgrace of others, I regret the necessity I am under of mentioning these particulars; my reason for it is, that the transaction which so disturbed him may possibly be better known than the motives that actuated me at the time.-HAWKINS.-[Miss Hawkins's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 264., tells this story in the same way, supplies Steevens's name, and insists on the same

At the mention of this circumstance, Johnson paused; but recovering himself, said, "You should not have laid hands on the book; for had I missed it, and not known you had it, I should have roared for my book, as Othello did for his handkerchief, and probably have run mad.”

I gave him time, till the next day, to compose himself, and then wrote him a letter, apologising, and assigning at large the reasons for my conduct; and received a verbal answer by Mr. Langton, which, were I to repeat it, would render me suspected of inexcusable vanity; it concluded with these words, "If I was not satisfied with this, I must be a savage."

7th. I again visited him. Before my departure, Dr. Brocklesby came in, and, taking him by the wrist, Johnson gave him a look of great contempt, and ridiculed the judging of his disorder by the pulse. He complained, that the sarcocele had again made its appearance, and asked if a puncture would not relieve him, as it had done the year before? The doctor answered, that it might, but that his surgeon was the best judge of the effect of such an operation. Johnson, upon this, said, "How many men in a year die through the timidity of those whom they consult for health! I want length of life, and you fear giving me pain, which I care not for."

8th. I visited him with Mr. Langton, and found him dictating to Mr. Strahan another will (1), the former being, as he said at the time of making it, a temporary

justification, which would be quite inconclusive, even if the fact on which the suspicion against Steevens was grounded were true, for the purloined paper was only a copy of an address from the Middlesex magistrates to the king (which was, from its very nature, destined for publication). And after all, there was no other proof that Steevens had taken this paper, than that it appeared in the St. James's Chronicle the day after Steevens had made a visit at Sir John's. Hawkins's act was unjustifiable, and the defence frivolous. It is observable, that there was no allusion to these circumstances in the first edition of Hawkins's work.-C.]

(1) [There seems something odd in this affair of the will. Why did Johnson, after employing Sir J. Hawkins, a professional and in every other respect a proper person to draw up his will, throw it aside, and dictate another to a young clergyman? Had Sir J. Hawkins attempted to thwart the testator's intentions, which he tells us he disapproved of? or was this change the result of the scene of the 5th about the secreted books? In any case, it may have tended to produce that unfavourable temper towards Dr. Johnson which tinges the whole, and certainly discolours some passages of Sir J. Hawkins's book.-C.]

L

one. On our entering the room, he said, "God bless you both." I arrived just time enough to direct the execution, and also the attestation of it. After he had published it, he desired Mr. Strahan to say the Lord's Prayer, which he did, all of us joining. Johnson, after it, uttered extempore, a few pious ejaculations.

9th. I saw him in the evening, and found him dictating to Mr. Strahan a codicil to the will he had made the evening before. I assisted them in it, and received from the testator a direction, to insert a devise to his executors of the house at Litchfield, to be sold for the benefit of certain of his relations, a bequest of sundry pecuniary and specific legacies, a provision for the annuity of 70l. for Francis, and, after all, a devise of all the rest, residue, and remainder of his estate and effects, to his executors, in trust for the said Francis Barber, his executors and administrators; and having dictated accordingly, Johnson executed and published it as a codicil to his will.(1)

He was now so weak as to be unable to kneel, and lamented that he must pray sitting; but, with an effort, he placed himself on his knees, while Mr. Strahan repeated the Lord's Prayer. During the whole of the

(1) How much soever I approve of the practice of rewarding the fidelity of servants, I cannot but think that, in testamentary dispositions in their favour, some discretion ought to be exercised; and that, in scarce any instance, they are to be preferred to those who are allied to the testator either in blood or by affinity. Of the merits of this servant, a judgment may be formed from what I shall hereafter have occasion to say of him. It was hinted to me many years ago, by his master, that he was a loose fellow; and I learned from others, that, after an absence from his service of some years, he married. In his search of a wife, he picked up one of those creatures with whom, in the disposal of themselves, no contrariety of colour is an obstacle. It is said, that soon after his marriage he became jealous, and it may be supposed, that he continued so, till, by presenting him with a daughter of her own colour, his wife put an end to all his doubts on that score. Notwithstanding which, Johnson, in the excess of indiscriminating benevolence, about a year before his death, took the wife and her two children into his house, and made them a part of his family; and, by the codicil to his will, made a disposition in his favour, to the amount in value of near fifteen hundred pounds. - HAWKINS.-[Several small causes contributed to make Sir J. Hawkins dislike Barber; who, in the kind of feud and rivalry between Sir John and Boswell, sided with the latter, and communicated to him the papers to which he, as residuary legatee, became entitled. It is painful to see in a man of Sir J. Hawkins's station, such rancour as prompted the imputation made in the foregoing note against the poor woman, Barber's wife, whose moral conduct, whatever it may have been, had surely nothing to do with Sir John Hawkins's squabbles with her husband.-C.]

evening he was much composed and resigned. Being become very weak and helpless, it was thought necessary that a man should watch with him all night; and one was found in the neighbourhood, who, for half a crown a night, undertook to sit up with and assist him. When the man had left the room, he, in the presence and hearing of Mr. Strahan and Mr. Langton, asked me where I meant to bury him. I answered, doubtless, in Westminster Abbey: "If," said he, "my executors think it proper to mark the spot of my interment by a stone, let it be so placed as to protect my body from injury." I assured him it should be done. Before my departure, he desired Mr. Langton to put into my hands money to the amount of upwards of 1007., with a direction to keep it till called for.

10th. This day at noon I saw him again. He said to me, that the male nurse to whose care I had committed him was unfit for the office. "He is," said he, "an idiot, as awkward as a turnspit just put into the wheel, and as sleepy as a dormouse." Mr. Cruikshank came into the room, and looking on his scarified leg, saw no sign of a mortification.

11th. At noon, I found him dozing, and would not disturb him.

12th. Saw him again; found him very weak, and, as he said, unable to pray.

13th. At noon I called at the house, but went not into his room, being told that he was dozing. I was further informed by the servants that his appetite was totally gone, and that he could take no sustenance. At eight in the evening of the same day, word was brought me by Mr. Sastres, to whom, in his last moments, he uttered these words, Jam moriturus,' that at a quarter past seven, he had, without a groan, or the least sign of pain or uneasiness, yielded his last breath.

At eleven, the same evening, Mr. Langton came to me, and, in an agony of mind, gave me to understand, that our friend had wounded himself in several parts of the body. I was shocked at the news; but, upon being told that he had not touched any vital part, was easily

able to account for an action, which would else have given us the deepest concern. The fact was, that conceiving himself to be full of water, he had done that, which he had so often solicited his medical assistants to do, made two or three incisions in his lower limbs, vainly hoping for some relief from the flux that might follow.

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Early the next morning, Frank came to me; and, being desirous of knowing all the particulars of this transaction, I interrogated him very strictly concerning it, and received from him answers to the following effect:

That, at eight in the morning of the preceding day, upon going into the bedchamber, his master, being in bed, ordered him to open a cabinet, and give him a drawer in it; that he did so, and that out of it his master took a case of lancets, and choosing one of them, would have conveyed it into the bed, which Frank and a young man that sat up with him seeing, they seized his hand, and entreated him not to do a rash action: he said he would not; but drawing his hand under the bed-clothes, they saw his arm move. Upon this they turned down the clothes, and saw a great effusion of blood, which soon stopped; that soon after, he got at a pair of scissors that lay in a drawer by him, and plunged them deep in the calf of each leg; that immediately they sent for Mr. Cruikshank and the apothecary, and they, or one of them, dressed the wounds; that he then fell into that dozing which carried him off; that it was conjectured he lost eight or ten ounces of blood; and that this effusion brought on the dozing, though his pulse continued firm till three o'clock.

That this act was not done to hasten (') his end, but to discharge the water that he conceived to be in him, I have not the least doubt. A dropsy was his disease; he looked upon himself as a bloated carcass; and, to attain

(1) [The clumsy solemnity with which Hawkins thinks it necessary to defend Dr. Johnson from the suspicion of endeavouring to shorten his life by an act manifestly, avowedly, and even passionately meant to prolong it, is certainly very offensive; but it hardly, I think, justifies Mr. Boswell's suspicions that there was some malevolence at the bottom of the defence.-C.]