During his last illness, Johnson experienced the steady and kind attachment of his numerous friends.  Mr. Hoole has drawn up a narrative of what passed in the visits which he paid him during that time, from the both of November to the 13th of December, the day of his death, inclusive, and has favoured me with a perusal of it, with permission to make extracts, which I have done.  Nobody was more attentive to him than Mr. Langton, to whom he tenderly said, Te teneam moriens deficiente manu[1237].  And I think it highly to the honour of Mr. Windham, that his important occupations as an active statesman[1238] did not prevent him from paying assiduous respect to the dying Sage whom he revered.  Mr. Langton informs me, that, ’one day he found Mr. Burke and four or five more friends sitting with Johnson.  Mr. Burke said to him, “I am afraid, Sir, such a number of us may be oppressive to you.”  “No, Sir, (said Johnson,) it is not so; and I must be in a wretched state, indeed, when your company would not be a delight to me.”  Mr. Burke, in a tremulous voice, expressive of being very tenderly affected, replied, “My dear Sir, you have always been too good to me.”  Immediately afterwards he went away.  This was the last circumstance in the acquaintance of these two eminent men[1239].’

The following particulars of his conversation within a few days of his death, I give on the authority of Mr. John Nichols[1240]:—­

’He said, that the Parliamentary Debates were the only part of his writings which then gave him any compunction[1241]:  but that at the time he wrote them, he had no conception he was imposing upon the world, though they were frequently written from very slender materials, and often from none at all,—­the mere coinage of his own imagination.  He never wrote any part of his works with equal velocity.  Three columns of the Magazine, in an hour, was no uncommon effort, which was faster than most persons could have transcribed that quantity.

’Of his friend Cave, he always spoke with great affection.  “Yet (said he,) Cave, (who never looked out of his window, but with a view to the Gentleman’s Magazine,) was a penurious pay-master; he would contract for lines by the hundred, and expect the long hundred; but he was a good man, and always delighted to have his friends at his table.”

’When talking of a regular edition of his own works, he said, “that he had power, [from the booksellers,] to print such an edition, if his health admitted it; but had no power to assign over any edition, unless he could add notes, and so alter them as to make them new works; which his state of health forbade him to think of.  I may possibly live, (said he,) or rather breath, three days, or perhaps three weeks; but find myself daily and gradually weaker.”

’He said at another time, three or four days only before his death, speaking of the little fear he had of undergoing a chirurgical operation, “I would give one of these legs for a year more of life, I mean of comfortable life, not such as that which I now suffer;”—­and lamented much his inability to read during his hours of restlessness; “I used formerly, (he added,) when sleepless in bed, to read like a Turk[1242].”