LETTER XXIV.

To Mrs: Thrale.

Bolt Court, Fleet Street, June 19, 1783.

Dearest madam,

I am sitting down in no cheerful solitude, to write a narrative which would once have affected you with tenderness and sorrow; but which you will perhaps pass over now with the careless glance of frigid indifference. For this diminution of regard, however, I know not whether I ought to blame you, who may have reasons which I cannot know; and I do not blame myself, who have for a great part of human life done you what good I could, and have never done you evil.

I had been disordered in the usual way; and had been relieved by the usual methods, by opium and cathartics; but I had rather lessened my dose of opium. On Monday, the sixteenth, I sat for my picture; and I walked a considerable way with little inconvenience. In the afternoon and evening, I felt myself light and easy, and began to plan schemes of life. Thus I went to bed : and, in a short time, I waked and sat up, as has been long my custom; when I felt a confusion and indistinctness in my head, which .lasted, I suppose, about half a minute. I was alarmed; and I prayed to God, that however he might afflict my body, he would spare my understanding. This prayer, that I might try the inte grity of my faculties, I made in Latin verse. The lines were not very good, but I knew them not to be very good: I made them easily, and concluded myself to be unimpaired in my faculties..

Soon after, I perceived that I had suffered a paralytic I had stroke, and that my speech was taken from me. no pain, and so little dejection in this dreadful state, that

I wondered at my own apathy; and I considered that perhaps death itself when it should come, would excite less horror than seems now to attend it.

In order to rouse the vocal organs, I took two drams; and I put myself into violent motion: but all was in vain. I then went to bed; and, strange as it may seem, I think, I slept. When I saw light, it 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 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 who could not immediately comprehend why he should read what I put into his hands.

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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 knew not how nor 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 very disinterested; and they 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 very imperfect articulation. My memory, I hope, yet remains as it was; but such an attack produces solicitude for the safety of every faculty.

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How this will be received by you, I know not. hope you will sympathize with me. I hope that what, when I could speak, I spoke of you, and to you, will, in a sober and serious hour, be remembered by you; and surely it cannot be remembered but with some degree of kindness. I have loved you with virtuous affec

tion; I have honoured you with sincere esteem. Let not all our endearments be forgotten; but let me have, in this great distress, your pity and your prayers. You see I yet turn to you with my complaints as a settled and unalienable friend; do not drive me from you, for I have not deserved either neglect, or hatred.

To the girls, who do not write often, (for Susy has written only once, and miss Thrale owes me a letter,) I earnestly recommend, as their guardian and friend, that they remember their Creator in the days of their youth.

O God! give me comfort and confidence in Thee; forgive my sins; and, if it be thy good pleasure, relieve my diseases for Jesus Christ's sake!

I am, &c.

Samuel Johnson.

LETTER XXV.

To Mrs. Thrale.

London, Nov. 13, 1783.

Dear madam,

Since you have written to me with the attention and tenderness of ancient time, your letters give me a great part of the pleasure which a life of solitude admits. You will never bestow any share of your good will on one who deserves it better. Those who 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 con-nected with many circumstances and occasions, though it may for a while be suppressed by disgust or resentment, with or without a cause, is hourly revived by accidental recollection. To those who have lived long together, every thing heard and every thing seen recalls some pleasure communicated, or some benefit 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.

I have not forgotten the Davenants, though they seem to have forgotten me. I began very early to tell them what they have commonly found to be true. I am sorry to hear of their building. I have always warned those whom I loved against that mode of ostentatious expense.

The frequency of death, to those who look upon it in the leisure of Arcadia, is very dreadful. We all know what it should teach us; let us all be diligent to learn. Lucy Porter has lost her brother, lost-let me not now remember. added to the mournful catalogue. madam, your &c.

But whom I have Let not your loss be Write soon again to,

Samuel Johnson.

LETTER XXVI.

Dear madam,

To Mrs. Thrale.

London, Nov. 20, 1783.

I began to grieve and wonder that I had no letter; but not being much accustomed to fetch in evil by circumspection or anticipation, I did not suspect that the omission had so dreadful a cause as the sickness of one of your dear children. As her physician thought so well of her when you wrote, I hope she is now out of danger. You do not tell me her disease; and perhaps you have not been able yourself fully to understand it.

That frigid stillness with which my pretty Sophy melts away, exhibits a temper very incommodious in sickness, and by no means amiable in the tenour of life. Incom municative taciturnity neither imparts nor invites friendship, but reposes on a stubborn sufficiency self-centred, and neglects the interchange of that social officiousness by which we are habitually endeared to one another. They who mean to make no use of friends, will be at little trouble to gain them; and to be without friendship, is to be without one of the first comforts of our present state. To have no assistance from other minds, in resolving doubts, in appeasing scruples, in balancing deliberations, is a very wretched destitution. If therefore your daughters have this silence by temper, do not let them have it by principle; show them that it is a perverse and inordinate disposition, which must be counteracted and reformed. Have I said enough?

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Poor Dr. Taylor represents himself as ill; and I afraid he is worse than in the summer.-My nights are very bad; but of the sarcocele I have now little except the memory.

'The life of my dear, lovely miss Sophy is safe! let us return thanks to the great Giver of existthat her continuance amongst us may be ence; and pray

a blessing to herself, and to those who love her.

Now she is recovered, she must write me a little his tory of her sufferings, and impart her schemes of study