concluded as I entered Lichfield. My affection and understanding went along with Erasmus, except that once or twice he somewhat unskilfully entangles Cicero's civil or moral, with his rhetorical character. I staid five days at Lichfield, but, being unable to walk, had no great pleasure, and yesterday, (19th,) I came hither, where I am to try what air and attention can perform.-Of any improvement in my health I cannot yet please myself with the perception. ******. -The asthma has no abatement. Opiates stop the fit, so as that I can sit and sometimes lie easy, but they do not now procure me the power of motion; and I am afraid that my general strength of body does not increase. The weather indeed is not benign; but how low is he sunk whose strength depends upon the weather!-I am now fooking into Floyer, who lived with his asthma to almost his ninetieth year. His book by want of order is obscure; and his asthina, I think, not of the same kind with mine. Something however, I may perhaps learn-My appetite still continues keen enough; and what I consider as a symptom of radical health, I have a voracious delight in raw summer fruit, of which I was less eager a few years ago. You will be pleased to communicate this account to Dr. Heberden, and if any thing is to be done, let me have your joint opinion. Now-abite curæ ; let me inquire after the Club "* July 31. "Not recollecting that Dr. Heberden might be at Windsor, I thought your letter long in coming. But, you know, nocitura petuntur, the letter which I so much desired, tells me that I have lost one of my best and tenderest friends.+ My comfort is, that he appeared to live like a man that had always before his eyes the fragility of our present existence, and was therefore, I hope, not unprepared to meet his Judge.-Your attention, dear Sir, and that of Dr. Heberden, to my health is extremely kind. I am loth to think that I grow worse; and cannot fairly prove even to my own partiality, that I grow much better." August 5. "I return you thanks, dear Sir, for your unwearied attention, both medicinal and friendly, and hope to prove the effect of your care by living to acknowledge it." August 12. "Pray be so kind as to have me in your thoughts, and mention my case to others as you have opportunity. I seem to myself neither to gain nor lose strength. I have lately tried milk, but have yet found no advantage, and I am afraid of it merely as a liquid. My appetite is still good, which I know is dear Dr. Heberden's criterion of the vis vita.-As we cannot now see each other, do not omit to write, for you cannot At the Essex Head, Essex-street. † Mr. Allen, the printer. think with what warmth of expectation I reckon the hours of a post-day." August 14. "I have hitherto sent you only melancholy letters; you will be glad to hear some better account. Yesterday the asthma remitted, perceptibly remitted, and I moved with more ease than I have enjoyed for many weeks. May God continue his mercy. This account I would not delay, because I am not a lover of complaints, or complainers, and yet I have, since we parted, uttered nothing till now but terror and sorrow. Write to me, dear Sir." August 16. "Better I hope, and better. My respiration gets more and more ease and liberty. I went to church yesterday, after a very liberal dinner, without any inconvenience; it is indeed, no long walk, but I never walked it without difficulty, since I came, before. the intention was only to overpower the seeming vis inertiæ of the pectoral and pulmonary muscles.-I am favoured with a degree of ease that very much delights me, and do not despair of another race upon the stairs of the Academy. -If I were, however, of a humour to see, or to shew the state of my body, on the dark side, I might say, 'Quid te exempta juvat spinis de pluribus una ?'† The nights are still sleepless, and the water rises, though it does not rise very fast. Let us, however, rejoice in all the good that we have. The remission of one disease will enable nature to combat the rest.—The squills I have not neglected; for I have taken more than a hundred drops a day, and one day took two hundred and fifty, which, according to the popular equivalent of a drop thank you, dear Sir, for your attention in to a grain, is more than half an ounce.ordering the medicines; your attention to me has never failed. If the virtue of medicines could be enforced by the benevolence of the prescriber, how soon should I be well!" asthma still continues, yet I do not trust August 19. "The relaxation of the it wholly to itself, but soothe it now and then with an opiate. I not only perform the perpetual act of respiration with less labour, but I can walk with fewer intervals of rest, and with greater freedom of motion. I never thought well of Dr. James's compounded medicines; his ingredients appear to me sometimes inefficacious and trifling, and sometimes heterogeneous and destructive of each other. This prescription exhi bits a composition of about three hundred and thirty grains, in which there are four grains of emetic tartar, and six drops [of] thebaic tincture. He that writes thus surely writes for show. The basis of his medicine is the gum ammoniacum, which dear Dr. Lawrence used to give, but of which I Horat. lib. et ep. ii. 212. never saw any effect. We will, if you please, let this medicine alone. The squills have every suffrage, and in the squills we will rest for the present." August 21. The kindness which you shew by having me in your thoughts upon all occasions, will, I hope, always fill my heart with gratitude. Be pleased to return my thanks to Sir George Baker, for the consideration which he has bestowed upon me. Is this the balloon that has been so long expected, this balloon to which I subscribed, but without payment? It is pity that philosophers have been disappointed, and shame that they have been cheated; but I know not well how to prevent either. Of this experiment I have read nothing; where was it exhibited? and who was the man that ran away with so much money ?--Continue, dear Sir, to write often and more at a time, for none of your prescriptions operate to their proper uses more certainly than your letters operate as cordials." August 26. "I suffered you to escape last post without a letter, but you are not to expect such indulgence very often; for I write not so much because I have any thing to say, as because I hope for an answer; and the vacancy of my life here makes a let. ter of great value. I have here little company and little amusement, and thus abandoned to the contemplation of my own miseries, I am something gloomy and depressed; this too I resist as I can, and find opium, I think, useful, but I seldom take more than one grain.-Is not this strange weather? Winter absorbed the spring, and now autumn is come before we have had summer; but let not our kinkness for each other imitate the inconstancy of the seasons." Sept. 2. "Mr. Windham has been here to see me; he came, I think, forty miles out of his way, and staid about a day and a half; perhaps I make the time shorter than it was. Such conversation I shall not have again till I come back to the regions of literature; and there Windham is, inter stellas + Luna minores." He then mentions the effects of certain medicines, as taken; that "Nature is recovering its original powers, and the functions returning to their proper state. God continue his mercies, and grant me to use them rightly." Sept. 9. Do you know the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire? And have you ever seen Chatsworth? I was at Chatsworth on Monday: I had seen it before, but never when its owners were at home: I was very kindly received, and honestly pressed to stay; but I told them that a sick man is not a fit inmate of a great house. But I hope to go again some time." It is remarkable that so good a Latin scholar as Johnson should have been so inattentive to the metre, as by mistake to have written stellas instead of ignes. Sept. 11. "I think nothing grows worse, but all rather better, except sleep, and that of late has been at its old pranks. Last evening, I felt what I had not known for a long time, an inclination to walk for amusement; 1 took a short walk, and came back again neither breathless nor fatigued. This has been a gloomy, frigid, ungenial summer, but of late it seems to mend; I hear the heat sometimes mentioned, but I do not feel it; Præterea minimus gelido jam in corpore sanguis I hope, however, with good help, to find means of supporting a winter at home, and to hear and tell at the Club what is doing, and what ought to be doing in the world. I have no company here, and shall naturally wish you, dear Sir, more leisure, would not come home hungry for conversation.-To be kind; but what leisure you have, you must bestow upon me." Sept. 16. "I have now let you alone for a long time, having indeed little to say. You charge me somewhat unjustly with luxury. At Chatsworth, you should remember, that I have eaten but once; and the Doctor, ence. with whom I live, follows a milk diet. I grow no fatter, though my stomach, if it be not disturbed by physic, never fails me.-I now grow weary of solitude, and think of removing next week to Lichfield, a place of more society, but otherwise of less conveniWhen I am settled, I shall write again. Of the hot weather that you men tioned, we have [not] had in Derbyshire very much, and for myself I seldom feel effect of my distemper; a supposition which heat, and suppose that my frigidity is the naturally leads me to hope that a hotter climate may be useful. But I hope to stand another English winter." Lichfield, Sept. 29. "On one day I had three letters about the air balloon: yours part to my friends in the country an idea of was far the best, and has enabled me to im. this species of amusement. In amusement, for I do not find that its course can be di mere amusement, I am afraid it must end, rected so as that it should serve any pur poses of conimunication; and it can give no new intelligence of the state of the air at above the height of mountains, which they different heights, till they have ascended seem never likely to do.-I came hither on the 27th. How long I shall stay, I have my asthma much remitted, but I have felt not determined. My dropsy is gone, and myself a little declining these two days, be expected. One day may be worse than at least to-day; but such vicissitudes must another; but this last month is far better than the former: if the next should be as ↑ Juvenal. Sat. x. 217. much better than this, I shall run about the town on my own legs." October 6. "The fate of the balloon I do not much lament: to make new balloons, is to repeat the jest again. We now know a method of mounting into the air, and, I think, are not likely to know more. The vehicles can serve no use till we can guide them; and they can gratify no curiosity till we mount with them to greater heights than | we can reach without; till we rise above the tops of the highest mountains, which we have yet not done. We know the state of the air in all its regions, to the top of Teneriffe, and therefore learn nothing from those who navigate a balloon below the clouds. The first experiment, however, was bold, and deserved applause and reward. But since it has been performed, and its event is known, I had rather now find a medicine that can ease an asthma." October 25. "You write to me with a zeal that animates, and a tenderness that melts me. I am not afraid either of a journey to London, or a residence in it. I came down with little fatigue, and am now not weaker. In the smoky atmosphere I was delivered from the dropsy, which I considered as the original and radical disease. The town is my element; there are my friends, there are my books, to which I have not yet bid farewell, and there are my amusements. Sir Joshua told me long ago, that my vocation was to public life, and 1 hope still to keep my station, till God shall bid me Go in peace.' To Mr. HoOLE. Ashbourne, Aug. 7. "Since I was here, I have two little letters from you, and have not had the gratitude to write. But every man is most free with his best friends, because he does not suppose that they can suspect him of intentional incivility. One reason for my omission is, that being in a place to which you are wholly a stranger, I have no topics of correspondence. If you had any knowledge of Ashbourne, I could tell you of two Ashbourne men, who, being last week condemned at Derby to be hanged for a robbery, went and hanged themselves in their cell. But this, however it may supply us with talk, is nothing to you. Your kindness, I know, would make you glad to hear some good of me, but I have not much good to tell; if I • His love of London continually appears. In a letter from him to Mrs. Smart, wife of his friend the poet, which is published in a well-written life of him, prefixed to an edition of his Poems, in 1791, there is the following sentence: "To one that has passed so many years in the pleasures and opulence of London, there are few places that can give much delight." Once, upon reading that line in the curious epitaph quoted in "The Spectator," "Born in New-England, did in London die:" he laughed and said, "I do not wonder at this. It would have been strange, if born in London, he had died in New-England. Aug. 13. “I thank you for your affec tionate letter. I hope we shall both be the better for each other's friendship, and I hope we shall not very quickly be parted.--Tell Mr. Nichols that I shall be glad of his correspondence, when his business allows him a little remission; though to wish him less business, that I may have more pleasure, would be too selfish.-To pay for seats at the balloon is not very necessary, because, in less than a minute, they who gaze at a mile's distance will see all that can be seen. About the wings, I am of your mind; they cannot at all assist it, nor I think regulate its motion. -I am now grown somewhat easier in my body, but my mind is sometimes depressed. About the Club I am in no great pain. The forfeitures go on, and the house, I hear, is improved for our future meetings. I hope we shall meet often and sit long." Sept 4. "Your letter was, indeed, long in coming, but it was very welcome. Our acquaintance has now subsisted long, and our recollection of each other involves a great space, and many little occurrences, which melt the thoughts to tenderness.Write to me, therefore, as frequently as you can. I hear from Dr. Brocklesby and Mr. Ryland, that the Club is not crowded. I hope we shall enliven it when winter brings us together." To Dr. BURNEY. August 2. "The weather, you know, has not been balmy; I am now reduced to think, and am at last content to talk of the weather. Pride must have a fall.+-I have lost dear Mr. Allen; and wherever I turn, the dead or the dying meet my notice, and force my attention upon misery and mortality. Mrs. Burney's escape from so much danger, and her ease after so much pain, throws, however, some radiance of hope upon the gloomy prospect. May her recovery be perfect, and her continuance long. I struggle hard for life. I take physic, and take air; my friend's chariot is always ready. We have run this morning twenty-four miles, and could run forty-eight more. But who can run the race with death ?" Sept. 4. [Concerning a private transac There was no information for which Dr. Johnson was less grateful than for that which concerned the weather. It was in allusion to his impatience with those who were reduced to keep conversation alive by observations on the weather, that he applied the old proverb to himself. If any one of his intimate acquaintance told him it was hot or cold, wet or dry, windy or calm, he would stop them, by saying," Poh! poh! you are telling us that of which none but men in a mine or a dun geon can be ignorant. Let us bear with patience, or enjoy in quiet, elementary changes, whether for the better or the worse, as they are never secrets." B. tion, in which his opinion was asked, and got to Lichfield in a stage vehicle, with very after giving it, he makes the following re- little fatigue, in two days, and had the con. flections, which are applicable on other occa- solation † to find, that since my last visit my sions.] ، Nothing deserves more compas- | three old acquaintance are all dead. July 20, sion than wrong conduct with good mean- I went to Ashbourne, where I have been till ing; than loss or obloquy suffered by one, now; the house in which we live is repair. who, as he is conscious only of good inten- ing. I live in too much solitude, and am tions, wonders why he loses that kindness often deeply dejected: I wish we were nearwhich he wishes to preserve; and not know- er, and rejoice in your removal to London. ing his own fault, if, as may sometimes hap- A friend, at once cheerful and serious, is a pen, nobody will tell him, goes on to offend great acquisition. Let us not neglect one by his endeavours to please.-I am delight- another for the little time which Providence ed by finding that our opinions are the same. allows us to hope. Of my health I cannot -You will do me a real kindness by conti- tell you, what my wishes persuaded me to nuing to write. A post-day has now been expect, that it is much improved by the sealong a day of recreation." son or by remedies. I am sleepless; my legs Nov. 1. "Our correspondence paused for grow weary with a very few steps, and the want of topics. I had said what I had to water breaks its boundaries in some degree. say on the matter proposed to my considera- The asthma, however, has remitted; my tion: and nothing remained but to tell you breath is still much obstructed, but is more that I waked or slept; that I was more or free than it was. Nights of watchfulness less sick. I drew my thoughts in upon my- produce torpid days; I read very little, self, and supposed yours employed upon though I am alone; for I am tempted to your book. That your book has been delay-supply in the day what I lost in bed. This ed I am glad, since you have gained an opportunity of being more exact.-Of the caution necessary in adjusting narratives there is no end. Some tell what they do not know, that they may not seem ignorant, and others from mere indifference about truth. All truth is not, indeed, of equal iniportance; but, if little violations are allowed, every violation will in time be thought little and a writer should keep himself vigilantly on his guard againt the first temptations to negligence or supineness. I had ceased to write, because respecting you I had no more to say, and respecting myself could say little good. I cannot boast of advancement, and in case of convalescence it may be said, with few exceptions, non progredi, est regredi. I hope I may be excepted. My great difficulty was with iny sweet Fanny, who, by her artifice of inserting her letter in yours, had given me a precept of frugality which I was not at liberty to neglect; and I know not who were in town under whose cover I could send my letter. I rejoice to hear that you are so well, and have a delight particularly sympathetic in the recovery of Mrs. Burney." To Mr. LANGTON. Aug. 25. "The kindness of your last letter, and my omission to answer it, begins to give you, even in my opinion, a right to recriminate, and to charge me with forgetfulness for the absent. I will, therefore, delay no longer to give an account of myself, and wish I could relate what would please either myself or my friend-On July 13, I left London, partly in hope of help from new air and change of place, and partly excited by the sick inan's impatience of the present. • The celebrated Miss Fannv Burney. I is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery. Yet am I so much better than in the beginning of the year, that I ought to be ashamed of complaining. I now sit and write with very little sensibility of pain or weakness; but when I rise I shall find my legs betraying me. Of the money which you mentioned, I have no immediate need; keep it, however, for me, unless some exigence requires it. Your papers I will shew you certainly, when you would see them; but I am a little angry at you for not keeping minutes of your own acceptum et expensum, and think a little time might be spared from Aristophanes, for the res familiares. Forgive me, for I mean well. I hope, dear Sir, that you and Lady Rothes, and all the young people, too many to enumerate, are well and happy. God bless you all." To Mr. WINDHAM. August. "The tenderness with which you have been pleased health nor sickness can, I hope, make me to treat me, through my long illness, neither forget; and you are not to suppose, that after we parted you were no longer in my mind. But what can a sick man say, but that he is sick? His thoughts are necessarily concentred in himself: he neither receives nor can give delight; his inquiries are after alleviations of pain, and his efferts are to catch some momentary comfort.Though I am now in the neighbourhood of the Peak, you must expect no account of its wonders, of its hills, its waters, its ca verns, or its mines; but I will tell you, det [Probably some word has been here omitted befize consolation; perhaps sad or miserable; or the w solation has been printed by mistake, instead of por cation:-but the original letter not being now (170 B Mr. Langton's hands, the error (if it be one) cannot corrected. M. Sir, what I hope you will not hear with less satisfaction, that, for about a week past, my asthma has been less afflictive." Lichfield, October 2. "I believe you had been long enough acquainted with the phanomena or sickness, not to be surprised that a sick man wishes to be where he is not, and where it appears to every body but himself that he might easily be, without having the resolution to remove. I thought Ashbourne a solitary place, but did not come hither till last Monday.-I have here more company, but my health has for this last week not advanced; and in the languor of disease how little can be done? Whither or when I shail make my next remove, I cannot tell; but I intreat you, dear Sir, to let me know from time to time, where you may be found, for your residence is a very powerful attractive to, Sir, your most humble servant." DEAR SIR, "TO MR. PERKINS. I CANNOT but flatter myself that your kindness for me will make you glad to know where I am, and in what state. attack, and was not easily ejected, but at last gave way. The asthma suddenly remitted in bed, on the 13th of August, and, though now very oppressive, is, I think, still something gentler than it was before the remission. My limbs are miserably debilitated, and my nights are sleepless and tedious. When you read this, dear Sir, you are not sorry that I wrote no sooner. I will not prolong my complaints. I hope still to see you in a happier hour, to talk over what we have often talked, and perhaps to find new topics of merriment, or new incitements to curiosity. "I am, dear Sir, &c. "Lichfield, Oct. 20, 1784." "SAM. JOHNSON. "TO JOHN PARADISE, ESQ.* "DEAR SIR, "THOUGH in all my summer's excursion I have given you no account of myself, I hope you think better of me than to imagine it possible for me to forget you, whose kindness to me has been too great and too constant not to have made its impression on a "I have been struggling very hard with harder breast than mine.-Silence is not my diseases. My breath has been very very culpable, when nothing pleasing is supmuch obstructed, and the water has attempt-pressed. It would have alleviated none of ed to encroach upon me again. I passed the your complaints to have read my vicissitudes first part of the summer at Oxford, after- of evil. I have struggled hard with very forwards I went to Lichfield, thence to Ash- midable and obstinate maladies: and though bourne, in Derbyshire, and a week ago II cannot talk of health, think all praise due returned to Lichfield. "My breath is now much easier, and the water is in a great measure run away, so that I hope to see you again before winter. "Please make my compliments to Mrs. Perkins, and to Mr. and Mrs. Barclay. I am, dear Sir, "Your most humble servant, "Lichfield, Oct. 4, 1784." "DEAR SIR, "CONSIDERING what reason you gave me in the spring to conclude that you took part in whatever good or evil might befall me, I ought not to have omitted so long the account which I am now about to give you. My diseases are an asthma and a dropsy, and, what is less curable, seventy-five. Of the dropsy, in the beginning of the summer, or in the spring, I recovered to a degree which struck with wonder both me and my physicians: the asthma now is likewise, for a time, very much relieved. I went to Oxford, where the asthma was very tyrannical, and the dropsy began again to threaten me; but seasonable physic stopped the inundation: I then returned to London, and in July took a resolution to visit Staffordshire and Derbyshire, where I am yet struggling with my disease. The dropsy made another to my Creator and Preserver for the continuance of my life. The dropsy has made two attacks, and has given way to medicine; the asthma is very oppressive; but that has likewise once remitted. I am very weak, and very sleepless; but it is time to conclude the tale of misery.-I hope, dear Sir, that you grow better, for you have likewise your share of human evil, and that your lady and the young charmers are well. |