Thrale was dead.'
[279] Pr. and Med. p 191. BOSWELL. The rest of the entry should be given:--'On Wednesday, 11, was buried my dear friend Thrale, who died on Wednesday 4; and with him were buried many of my hopes and pleasures. [On Sunday, 1st, the physician warned him against full meals, on Monday I pressed him to observance of his rules, but without effect, and Tuesday I was absent, but his wife pressed forbearance upon him again unsuccessfully. At night I was called to him, and found him senseless in strong convulsions. I staid in the room, except that I visited Mrs. Thrale twice.] About five, I think, on Wednesday morning he expired; I felt, &c. Farewell. May God that delighteth in mercy have had mercy on thee. I had constantly prayed for him some time before his death. The decease of him from whose friendship I had obtained many opportunities of amusement, and to whom I turned my thoughts as to a refuge from misfortunes, has left me heavy. But my business is with myself.' The passage enclosed in brackets I have copied from the original MS. Mr. Strahan, the editor, omitted it, no doubt from feelings of delicacy. What a contrast in this to the widow who published a letter in which she had written:--'I wish that you would put in a word of your own to Mr. Thrale about eating less!' Piozzi Letters, ii.130. Baretti, in a note on Piozzi Letters, ii.142, says that 'nobody ever had spirit enough to tell Mr. Thrale that his fits were apoplectic; such is the blessing of being rich that nobody dares to speak out.' In Johnson's Works (1787), xi.203, it is recorded that 'Johnson, who attended Thrale in his last moments, said, "His servants would have waited upon him in this awful period, and why not his friend?"'
[280] Johnson's letters to the widow show how much he felt Thrale's death. 'April 5, 1781. I am not without my part of the calamity. No death since that of my wife has ever oppressed me like this. April 7. My part of the loss hangs upon me. I have lost a friend of boundless kindness, at an age when it is very unlikely that I should find another. April 9. Our sorrow has different effects; you are withdrawn into solitude, and I am driven into company. I am afraid of thinking what I have lost. I never had such a friend before. April 11. I feel myself like a man beginning a new course of life. I had interwoven myself with my dear friend.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 191-97. 'I have very often,' wrote Miss Burney, in the following June, 'though I mention them not, long and melancholy discourses with Dr. Johnson about our dear deceased master, whom, indeed, he regrets incessantly.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 63. On his next birthday, he wrote:--'My first knowledge of Thrale was in 1765. I enjoyed his favour for almost a fourth part of my life.' Pr. and Med. p.191. One or two passages in Mrs. Thrale's Letters shew her husband's affection for Johnson. On May 3, 1776, she writes:--'Mr. Thrale says he shall not die in peace without seeing Rome, and I am sure he will go nowhere that he can help without you.' Piozzi Letters, i.317. A few days later, she speaks of 'our dear master, who cannot be quiet without you for a week.' Ib. p.329. Johnson, in his fine epitaph on Thrale (Works, i.153) broke through a rule which he himself had laid down. In his Essay on Epitaphs (Ib. v 263), he said:--'It is improper to address the epitaph to the passenger [traveller], a custom which an injudicious veneration for antiquity introduced again at the revival of letters.' Yet in the monument in Streatham Church, we find the same Abi viator which he had censured in an epitaph on Henry IV of France.
[281] Johnson's letters to Mrs. Thrale shew that he had long been well acquainted with the state of her husband's business. In the year 1772, Mr. Thrale was in money difficulties. Johnson writes to her almost as if he were a partner in the business. 'The first consequence of our late trouble ought to be an endeavour to brew at a cheaper rate...Unless this can be done, nothing can help us; and if this be done, we shall not want help.' Piozzi Letters, i.57. He urges economy in the household, and continues:--'But the fury of housewifery will soon subside; and little effect will be produced, but by methodical attention and even frugality.' Ib. p.64. In another letter he writes:--'This year will undoubtedly be an year of struggle and difficulty; but I doubt not of getting through it; and the difficulty will grow yearly less and less. Supposing that our former mode of life kept us on the level, we shall, by the present contraction of expense, gain upon fortune a thousand a year, even though no improvements can be made in the conduct of the trade.' Piozzi Letters, i. 66. Four years later, he writes:--'To-day I went to look into my places at the Borough. I called on Mr. Perkins in the counting-house. He crows and triumphs, as we go on we shall double our business.' Ib. p. 333. When the executors first met, he wrote:--'We met to-day, and were told of mountainous difficulties, till I was provoked to tell them, that if there were really so much to do and suffer, there would be no executors in the world.