since my misfortunes. A little time will complete them, and separate you and me for ever. But in what part of the world soever I am, I will live mindful of your sincere kindness to me; and will please myself with the thought, that I live in your esteem and affection us much as ever "I did; and that no accident of life, no distance of time or place, will alter you in that respect. It never can me; who have loved and valued you ever since I knew you, and shall not fail to do it when I am not allowed to tell you so ; as the case will soon be. Give my faithful services to Dr. Arbuthnot, and thanks for what he sent me, which was much to the purpose, if any thing can be said to be to the purpose, in a case that is already determined. Let him know my defence will be such, that neither my friends need blush for me, nor my enemies have great occasion of triumph, though sure of the victory. I shall want his advice before I go abroad, in many things, but I question whether I shall be permitted to see him, or any body, but such as are absolutely necessary towards the despatch of my private affairs. If so, God bless you both; may no part of the ill fortune that attends me, ever pursue either of you! I know not but I may call upon you at my hearing, to say somewhat about my way of spending my time at the deanery, which did not seem calculated towards managing plots and conspiracies. But of that I shall consider ; you and I have spent many hours together, upon much pleasanter subjects; and, that I may preserve the old custom, I shall not part with you now till I have closed this letter with three lines of Milton, which you, I know, readily, and not without some degree of concern, apply to to your ever affectionate friend.

Some natʼral tears he dropt, but wip'd them soon.

The world was all before where to choose

His place of rest; and Providence his guide.

DEAR SIR,

LETTER 171.

Dr. Arbuthnot to Mr. Pope.

I little doubt of your kind concern for me, nor of that of the lady you mention. I have nothing to repay my friends with at present, but prayers and good wishes. I have the satisfaction to find that I am as officiously served by my friends as he that has thousands to leave in legacies, besides the assurance of their sincerity. God Almighty has made my bodily distress as easy as a thing of that nature can be. I have found some relief, at least sometimes, from the air of this place. My nights are bad, but many poor creatures are worse.

As for you, my good friend, think, since our first acquaintance, there have not been any of these little suspicions or jealousies that often affect the sincerest friendships; I am sure not on my side. I must be so sincere as to own, that though I could not help valuing you for those talents which the world prizes, yet they were not the foundation of my friendship; they were quite of another sort; nor shall I at present offend you by enumerating them! And I make it my last request, that you will continue that noble disdain and abhorrence of vice which you seem naturally endued with, but still with a due regard to your own safety and study more to inform than to chastise, though the one cannot be effected

without the other. Lord Bathurst I have always honored, for every good quality that a person of his rank ought to have; pray give my respects and kindest wishes to the family. My venison stomach is gone, but I have those about me, and often with me, who will be very glad of his present; if it is left at my house it will be transmitted safe to me. A recovery in my case, and at my age, is impossible; the kindest wish of my friends is euthanasia; living or dying I shall always be your Sincere Friend.

LETTER 172.

Letter from Mr. West to Mr. Gray, soliciting his correspondence. SIR,

You use me very cruelly; you have sent me but one letter since I have been at Oxford, and that too agreeable not to make me sensible how great my loss is in not having more. Next to seeing you is the pleasure of seeing your hand writing; next to hearing you is the pleasure of hearing from you. Really and sincerely I wonder at you, that you thought it not worth while to answer my letter. I hope that this will have better success in behalf of your quondam school fellow; in behalf of one who has walked hand in hand with you, like the two children in the wood,

Thro' many a flow'ry path and shelly grot, Where learning lull'd us in her private maze. The very thought, you see tips my pen with poetry, and brings Eton to my view. Consider me very seriously here in a strange country, inhabited by things that call themselves doctors and masters of arts; a country flowing with syllogisms and ale, and where Horace and Virgil are equally unknown; consider me, I say, in this melancholy light, and then think if something be not due to Yours, &c.

LETTER 173.

Dr. Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, on the death of her Husband.

DEAREST MADAM,

Of your injunctions to pray for you and write to you, I hope to leave neither unobserved; and I hope to find you willing, in a short time, to alleviate your trouble, by some other exercise of mind. I am not without my part of the calamity. No death since that of my wife has ever oppressed me like this. But let us remember that we are in the hands of Him who knows when to give and when to take away; who will look upon us with mercy, through all our variations of existence, and who invites us to call on him in the day of trouble. Call upon him in this great revolution of life, and call with confidence. You then find comfort for the past, and support for the future. He that has given you happiness in marriage to a degree of which, without personal knowledge I should have thought the description fabulous, can give you another mode of happiness as a mother; and at last the happiness of losing all temporal cares in thoughts of an eternity in Heaven.

I do not exhort you to reason yourself into tranquility. We must first pray, and then labor; first implore the blessing of God, and those means which he puts into our hands. Cultivated ground has few weeds; a mind occupied by lawful business, has little room for useless regret

We read the will to-day; but I will not fill my first letter with any other account than that with all my zeal for your advantage, I am satisfied; and that the other executors, more used to consider property than I, commend it for wisdom and equity. Yet why should I not tell that you have five hundred pounds for your immediate expenses, and two thousand pounds á year, with both the houses, and all the goods?

you,

Let us pray for one another, that the time, whether long or short, that shall yet be granted us, may be well spent ; and that when this life, which at the longest is very short, shall come to an end, a better may begin which shall never end. I am dearest madam, yours, &c.

LETTER 174.

Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery, describing the melancholy situation of Dean Swift.

MY LORD,

The easy manner in which you reproach me, for not acquainting you with the poor dean's situation, lays a fresh obligation upon me; yet, mean as an excuse is for a fault I shall attempt one to your lordship, and only for this reason, that you may not think me capable of neglecting any thing you should command me. I told you in my last letter the dean's understanding was quite gone, and I feared the further particulars would only shock the tenderness of your nature, and the melancholy scene make your heart ache, as it has often done mine. I was the last person whom he knew, and when that part of his memory failed, he was so outrageous at seeing any body, that I was forced to leave him, nor could he rest for a night or two after seeing any person; so that all the attendance which I could pay him, was calling twice a week to inquire after his health, and to observe that proper care was taken of him, and durst only look at him while his back was towards me, fearing to discompose him. He walked ten hours a day, and would not eat or drink if his servant stayed in the room. His meat was served up ready cut, and sometimes it would lie an hour on the table before he would touch it, and then eat it walking. About six weeks ago, in one night's time, his left eyeswelled as large as an egg, and the lid, Mr. Nicholls, his surgeon, thought would mortify, and many large biles appeared upon his arms and body. The torture he was in is not to be described. Five persons could scarce hold him for a week from tearing out his own eyes; and, for near a month, he did not sleep two hours in twenty-four; yet a moderate appetite continued, and what is more to be wondered at, the last days of his illness he knew me perfectly well, took me by the hand, called my name, and showed the same pleasure as usual in seeing me. I asked him if he would give me a dinner? He said, to be sure, my old friend. Thus he continued that day, and he knew the doctor and surgeon, and all his family so well, that Mr. Nicholls thought it possible to call for what he wanted, and bear some of his old friends to amuse him. But alas! this pleasure to me was but of short duration; for the next day or two it was all over, and proved to be only pain that had roused him. He is now free from torture; his eye almost well, very quiet, and begins to sleep, but he cannot, without great difficulty, be prevailed on to walk a

I

turn about his room; and yet, in this way, the physycians think he may hold out for some time am, my lord, your lordship's most obedidient Humble servant.

LETTER 175.

Dr. Johnson to the Honorable Mr. Wyndham, on his (Dr. Johnson's) recovery from illness.

THE tenderness with which you have been pleased to treat me, through my long illness, neither health nor sickness can, I hope, make me forget; and you are not to suppose, 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 concentrated in himself; he neither receives nor can give delight; his inquiries are after alleviations of pain, and his efforts are to catch some momentary comfort. Though I am now in the neighborhood of the Peak, you must expect no account of its wonders, of its hills, its waters, its caverns, or its mines; but I will tell you, dear sir, what I hope you will not hear with less satisfaction, that, for about a week past, my asthma has been less afflictive. Yours, &c.

SIR,

LETTER 176.

Dr. Dodd to the King; written by Dr. Johnson.

May it not offend your majesty, that the most miserable of men applies himself to your clemency, as his last hope, and his last refuge; that your mercy is most earnestly and humbly implored by a clergyman, whom your laws and judges have condemned to the horror and ignominy of a public execution.

I confess the crime, and own the enormity of its consequences, and the danger of its examaple. Nor have I the confidence to petition for impunity; but humbly hope, that public security may be established, without the spectacle of a clergyman dragged through the streets to a death of infamy, amidst the derision of the profligate and profane; and that justice may be satisfied with irrevocable exile, perpetual disgrace, and hopeless penury.

My life, sir, has not been useless to mankind; I have benefitted many. But my offences against God are numberless, and I have but little time for repentance. Preserve me, sir, by your prerogative of mercy, from the necessity of appearing unprepared at that tribunal before which kings and subjects must stand at last together. Permit me to hide my guilt in some obscure corner of a foreign country, where, if I can ever attain confidence to hope that my prayers will be heard, they shall be poured with all the fervor of gratitude for the life and happiness of your majesty. I am, sir, your majesty's &c.

LETTER 177.

Dr. Johnson to the Right Honorable Charles Jenkinson, now Earl of Liverpool.

SIR,

Since the conviction and condemnation of Dr. Dodd, I have had, by

the intervention of a friend, some intercourse with him, and I am sure I shall lose nothing in your opinion by tenderness or commisseration. Whatever be the crime, it is not easy to have any knowledge of the delinquent without a wish that his life may be spared, at least when no life has been taken away by him. I will, therefore take the liberty of suggesting some reasons for which I wish this unhappy being to escape the utmost rigor of his sentence.

He is, so far as I can recollect, the first clergyman of our church who has suffered public execution for immorality; and I know not whether it would not be more for the interest of religion to bury such an offender in the obscurity of perpetual exile, than to expose him a in cart, and on the gallows, to all who, for any reason, are enemies to the clergy.

The supreme power has, in all ages, paid some attention to the voice of the people; and that voice does not least deserve to be heard when it calls out for mercy. There is now a very general desire that Dodd's life should be spared. More is not wished; and, perhaps, this is not too much to be granted.

If you, sir, have any opportunity of enforcing these reasons, you may, perhaps, think them worthy of consideration; but, whatever you determine, I most respectfully entreat that you will be pleased to pardon this intrusion. Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant.

DEAR SIR,

LETTER 178.

Dr. Dodd to Dr. Johnson.

June 25th, midnight.

Accept, thou great and good heart, my earnest and fervent thanks and prayers for all thy benevolent and kind efforts in my behalf. O! Dr. Johnson, as I sought your knowledge at an early hour in life, would to heaven I had cultivated the love and acquaintance of so excellent a man! I pray God, most sincerely, to bless you with the highest transports, the infelt satisfaction of humane and benevolent exertion! And admitted, as I trust I shall be, to the realms of bliss before you, I shall hail your arrival there with transports, and rejoice to acknowledge that you were my comforter, my advocate, and my friend! God be with you!

LETTER 179.

Dr. Johnson to Dr. Dodd, the evening previous to his Execution. DEAR SIR,

That which is appointed to all men is now coming upon you. Outward circumstances, the eyes and the thoughts of men, are below the notice of an immortal being, about to stand the trial for eternity.before 'the Supreme Judge of heaven and earth. Be comforted; your crime, morally or religiously considered, has no very deep dye of turpitude; it corrupted no man's principles; it attacked no man's life; it involved only a temporary and reparable injury. Of this, and all other sins, you are earnestly to repent; and may God, who knoweth our frailty, and desireth not our death, accept your repentance for the sake of his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.