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was time to contrive what I should do. Though God stopped my speech, He left me my hand: I enjoyed a mercy which was not granted to my dear friend Lawrence, who now perhaps overlooks me as I am writing, and rejoices that I have what he wanted. My first note was necessarily to my servant, who came in talking, and could not immediately comprehend why he should read what I put into his hands. I then wrote a card to Mr. Allen, that I might have a discreet friend at hand, to act as occasion should require. In penning this note I had some difficulty: my hand, I know not how or why, made wrong letters. I then wrote to Dr. Taylor to come to me, and bring Dr. Heberden; and I sent to Dr. Brocklesby, who is my neighbour. My physicians are very friendly, and give me great hopes; but you may imagine my situation. I have so far recovered my vocal powers as to repeat the Lord's Prayer with no imperfect articulation. My memory, I hope, yet remains as it was; but such an attack produces solicitude for the safety of every faculty.-Johnson (to Mrs. Thrale), 734.

JUNE 20th, 1783.-I never had any distortion of the countenance, but what Dr. Brocklesby called a little prolapsus, which went away the second day. The doctor fell to repeating Juvenal's ninth satire; but I let him see that the province was mine. July 3rd.-Last night was cool, and I rested well; and this morning I have been a friend at a poetical difficulty. Here is now a glimpse of daylight again; but how near is the evening none can tell, and I will not prognosticate. We all know that from none of us it can be far distant: may none of us know this in vain! I went, as I took care to boast, on Tuesday (July 1st) to the club, and hear that I was thought to have performed as well as usual.-735.

I AM now (August, 1783) broken with disease, without the alleviation of familiar friendship or domestic society; I have no middle state between clamour and silence, between general conversation and self-tormenting solitude. Levett is dead, and poor Williams is making haste to die: I am now quite alone; but let me turn my thoughts another way. Some benefit may be perhaps received from change of air, some from change of company, and some from mere change of place. It is not easy to grow well in a chamber where one has long been sick, and where everything seen, and every person speaking, revives and impresses images of pain. Though it be true that no man can run away from himself, yet he may escape from many causes of useless uneasiness.-737.

THE style and character of his conversation is pretty

generally known: it was certainly conducted in conformity with a precept of Lord Bacon; but it is not clear, I apprehend, that this conformity was either perceived or intended by Johnson. The precept alluded to is as follows: "In all kinds of speech, either pleasant, grave, severe, or ordinary, it is convenient to speak leisurely, and rather drawlingly than hastily; because hasty speech confounds the memory, and oftentimes, besides the unseemliness, drives a man either to stammering, a nonplus, or harping on that which should follow ; whereas a slow speech confirmeth the memory, addeth a conceit of wisdom to the hearers, besides a seemliness of speech and countenance."-" Hints for Civil Conversation."-Bacon's Works, 4to., vol. i., p. 571. Dr. Johnson's method of conversation was certainly calculated to excite attention, and to amuse and instruct (as it happened) without wearying or confusing his company. He was always most perfectly clear and perspicuous; and his language was so accurate, and his sentences so neatly constructed, that his conversation might have been all printed without any correction. At the same time it was easy and natural; the accuracy of it had no appearance of labour, constraint, or stiffness: he seemed more correct than others by the force of habit, and the customary exercises of his powerful mind. He spoke often in praise of French literature. "The French are excellent in this," he would say, "they have a book on every subject." Baxter's "Reasons of the Christian Religion," he thought, contained the best collection of the evidences of the divinity of the Christian system.-Boswell, 738.

Ir is very long since I heard from you; and that I have not answered is a very insufficient reason for the silence of a friend.-Johnson (to Boswell), 740.

THE general health of my body is as good as you have ever known it; almost as good as I can remember.-(To Mrs. Thrale, Oct., 1783.)

You have doubtless seen Stonehenge; and if you have not, I should think it a hard task to make an adequate description. It is in my opinion to be referred to the earliest habitation of the island, as a druidical monument of at least two thousand years; probably the most ancient work of man upon the island. Salisbury Cathedral and its neighbour Stonehenge are two eminent monuments of art and rudeness, and may show the first essay and the last perfection in architecture.-741.

JOHNSON this autumn received a visit from the celebrated Mrs. Siddons. When she came into the room, there happened to be no chair ready for her, which he observing, said, with a

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smile, "Madam, you who so often occasion a want of seats to other people, will the more easily excuse the want of one yourself." Having expatiated, with his usual force and eloquence, on Mr. Garrick's extraordinary eminence as an actor, he concluded with this compliment to his social talents: "And after all, madam, I thought him less to be envied on the stage than at the head of a table."-Boswell (1783).

THOSE that have loved longest love best. A sudden blaze of kindness may by a single blast of coldness be extinguished; but that fondness which length of time has connected with many circumstances and occasions, though it may for a while be depressed by disgust or resentment, with or without a cause, is hourly revived by accidental recollection. To those that have lived long together, everything heard and everything seen recalls some pleasure communicated or some benetit conferred, some petty quarrel or some slight endearment. Esteem of great powers, or amiable qualities newly discovered, may embroider a day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life. A friend may be often found and lost; but an old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost.Johnson, 742.

SINCERE criticism ought to raise no resentment, because judgment is not under the control of will.-743.

LIKE all other men who have great friends, you begin to feel the pangs of neglected merit; and all the comfort that I can give you is, by telling you that you have probably more pangs to feel and more neglect to suffer. Of the exaltations and depressions of your mind you delight to talk, and I hate to hear. Drive all such fancies from you.-(To Boswell), 744.

BOSWELL is a very clubable man. [Johnson had already invented unclubable for Sir J. Hawkins.-Croker.]-Johnson, 746.

JOHNSON'S conversation and his letters of this year were in no respect inferior to those of former years.-Boswell (1784), 747.

OLD London Bridge (was) once covered on both hands with shops and houses over them.-Croker.

My nights are very sleepless and very tedious, and yet I am extremely afraid of dying.-Johnson, 748.

O MY friend, the approach of death is very dreadful! I am afraid to think on that which I know I cannot avoid.—(To Taylor), 752.

LONDON, 15th of April, 1784.-Yesterday I had the pleasure

of giving another dinner to the remainder of the old club. We were as cheerful as in former times; only I could not make quite so much noise; for since the paralytic affliction, my voice is sometimes weak.-A sick man's thoughts soon turn back upon himself. I am still very weak, though my appetite is keen, and my digestion potent; and I gratify myself more at table than ever I did at my own cost before. I have now an inclination to luxury, which even your table did not excite; for till now my talk was more about the dishes than my thoughts. I now think and consult to-day what I shall eat tomorrow. This disease will likewise, I hope, be cured. For there are other things-how different!-which ought to predominate in the mind of such a man as I; but in this world the body will have its part; and my hope is, that it shall have no more. April 21st.-After a confinement of one hundred and twenty-nine days, more than the third part of a year, and no inconsiderable part of human life, I this day returned thanks to God in St. Clement's Church for my recovery; a recovery, in my seventy-fifth year, from a distemper which few in the vigour of youth are known to surmount; a recovery of which neither myself, my friends, nor my physicians had any hope; for though they flattered me with some continuance of life, they never supposed that I could cease to be dropsical. The dropsy, however, is quite vanished; and the asthma so much mitigated, that I walked to-day with a more easy respiration than I have known, I think, for perhaps two years past. I hope the mercy that lightens my days will assist me to use them well. April 26th.-On Saturday I showed myself again to the living world at the Exhibition [the Exhibition dinner of the Royal Academy, then given in the upper rooms in Somerset House.-Croker.]: much and splendid was the company, but, like the Doge of Genoa at Paris, I admired nothing but myself. I went up all the stairs to the pictures without stopping to rest or to breathe, "In all the madness of superfluous health." Mr. Howard called on me a few days ago, and gave me the new edition, much enlarged, of his "Account of Prisons."-(To Mrs. Thrale.)

JOHNSON's friends seem to have, as it were, celebrated his recovery by a round of dinners, for he wrote on the 13th (of May, 1784) to Mrs. Thrale:-" Now I am broken loose, my friends seem willing enough to see me. On Monday I dined with Paradise; Tuesday, Hoole; Wednesday, Dr. Taylor; today, with Joddrel; Friday, Mrs. Garrick; Saturday, Dr. Brocklesby; next Monday, Dilly."-Croker, 754.

TALKING of George Psalmanazar, whom he reverenced for his piety, Johnson said, “I should as soon think of contradicting a bishop."-Boswell.

I DINED yesterday (May 14, 1784) at Mrs. Garrick's, with Mrs. Carter, Miss Hannah More, and Fanny Burney. Three such women are not to be found; I know not where I could find a fourth, except Mrs. Lennox, who is superior to them all. -Johnson, 755.

JOHNSON. "Mrs. Montagu is a very extraordinary woman; she has a constant stream of conversation, and it is always impregnated; it has always meaning".-Boswell. "Mr. Burke has a constant stream of conversation."-Johnson. "Yes, sir; if a man were to go by chance at the same time with Burke under a shed to shun a shower, he would say, 'This is an extraordinary man.' If Burke should go into a stable to see his horse dressed, the ostler would say, We have had an extraordinary man here.' When Burke does not descend to be merry, his conversation is very superior indeed." One of the company mentioned his having seen a noble person driving in his carriage, and looking exceedingly well, notwithstanding his great age.-Johnson. "Ah, sir, that is nothing. Bacon observes, that a stout, healthy old man is like a tower undermined."-Boswell.

ON Sunday, May 16 (1784), I found Johnson alone. He talked of Mrs. Thrale with much concern. "Sir, she has done everything wrong since Thrale's bridle was off her neck."

JOHNSON, talking of the fear of death, said, "Some people are not afraid, because they look upon salvation as the effect of an absolute decree, and think they feel in themselves the marks of sanctification; others, and those the most rational in my opinion, look upon salvation as conditional; and as they never can be sure that they have complied with the conditions, they are afraid." In one of his little manuscript diaries about this time (May, 1784), I find a short notice, which marks his amiable disposition more certainly than a thousand studied declarations. "Afternoon spent cheerfully and elegantly, I hope without offence to God or man; though in no holy duty, yet in the general exercise and cultivation of benevolence."

TESTIMONY is like an arrow shot from a long bow; the force of it depends on the strength of the hand that draws it. Argument is like an arrow from a cross-bow, which has an equal force though shot by a child.-Boyle, 757.

WILLIAM LAW wrote the best piece of parenetic divinity; but William Law was no reasoner.- -Johnson, 759.

MRS. KENNICOTT spoke of her brother, the Reverend Mr.

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