'Let me know from time to time whatever happens; and I hope I need not tell you, how much I am interested in every change. Aug. 26, 1782.'
'Though the account with which you favoured me in your last letter could not give me the pleasure that I wished, yet I was glad to receive it; for my affection to my dear friend makes me desirous of knowing his state, whatever it be. I beg, therefore, that you continue to let me know, from time to time, all that you observe.
'Many fits of severe illness have, for about three months past, forced my kind physician often upon my mind. I am now better; and hope gratitude, as well as distress, can be a motive to remembrance. Bolt-court, Fleet-street, Feb. 4, 1783.' BOSWELL.
[453] Mr. Langton being at this time on duty at Rochester, he is addressed by his military title. BOSWELL.
[454] Eight days later he recorded:--'I have in ten days written to Aston, Lucy, Hector, Langton, Boswell; perhaps to all by whom my letters are desired.' Pr. and Med. 209. He had written also to Mrs. Thrale, but her affection, it should seem from this, he was beginning to doubt.
[455] See ante, p. 84.
[456] See ante, i. 247.
[457] See post, p. 158, note 4.
[458] Johnson has here expressed a sentiment similar to that contained in one of Shenstone's stanzas, to which, in his life of that poet, he has given high praise:--
'I prized every hour that went by, Beyond all that had pleased me before; But now they are gone [past] and I sigh, I grieve that I prized them no more.'
J. BOSWELL, JUN.
[459] She was his god-daughter. See post, May 10, 1784.
[460] 'Dr. Johnson gave a very droll account of the children of Mr. Langton, "who," he said, "might be very good children, if they were let alone; but the father is never easy when he is not making them do something which they cannot do; they must repeat a fable, or a speech, or the Hebrew alphabet, and they might as well count twenty for what they know of the matter; however, the father says half, for he prompts every other word."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 73. See ante, p. 20, note 2.
[461] A part of this letter having been torn off, I have, from the evident meaning, supplied a few words and half-words at the ends and beginnings of lines. BOSWELL.
[462] See vol. ii. p. 459. BOSWELL. She was Hector's widowed sister, and Johnson's first love. In the previous October, writing of a visit to Birmingham, he said:--'Mrs. Careless took me under her care, and told me when I had tea enough.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 205.
[463] This letter cannot belong to this year. In it Johnson says of his health, 'at least it is not worse.' But 1782 found him in very bad health; he passed almost the whole of the year 'in a succession of disorders' (post, p. 156). What he says of friendship renders it almost certain that the letter was written while he had still Thrale; and him he lost in April, 1781. Had it been written after June, 1779, but before Thrale's death, the account given of health would have been even better than it is (ante, iii. 397). It belongs perhaps to the year 1777 or 1778.
[464] 'To a man who has survived all the companions of his youth ... this full-peopled world is a dismal solitude.' Rambler, No. 69.
[465] See ante, i. 63.
[466] They met on these days in the years 1772, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 81, and 3.
[467] The ministry had resigned on the 20th. Ante, p. 139, note 1.
[468] Thirty-two years earlier he wrote in The Rambler, No. 53:-'In the prospect of poverty there is nothing but gloom and melancholy; the mind and body suffer together; its miseries bring no alleviation; it is a state in which every virtue is obscured, and in which no conduct can avoid reproach.' And again in No. 57:--'The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying, that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing.' See ante. 441.
[469] See ante, p. 128.
[470] Hannah More wrote in April of this year (Memoirs, i. 249):--'Poor Johnson is in a bad state of health. I fear his constitution is broken up.' (Yet in one week he dined out four times. Piozzi Letters, ii. 237.) At one of these dinners, 'I urged him,' she continues (ib. p. 251) 'to take a little wine. He replied, "I can't drink a little, child; therefore, I never touch it. Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult." He was very good-humoured and gay. One of the company happened to say a word about poetry, "Hush, hush," said he, "it is dangerous to say a word of poetry before her; it is talking of the art of war before Hannibal."'
[471] This book was published in 1781, and, according to Lowndes, reached its seventh edition by 1787. See ante, i. 214.
[472] The clergyman's letter was dated May 4. Gent. Mag. 1786, p. 93. Johnson is explaining the reason of his delay in acknowledging it.
[473] What follows appeared in the Morning Chronicle of May 29, 1782:--'A correspondent having mentioned, in the Morning Chronicle of December 12, the last clause of the following paragraph, as seeming to favour suicide; we are requested to print the whole passage, that its true meaning may appear, which is not to recommend suicide but exercise.