[428] ’Sept. 14, 1781.  Dr. Johnson has been very unwell indeed.  Once I was quite frightened about him; but he continues his strange discipline—­starving, mercury, opium; and though for a time half demolished by its severity, he always in the end rises superior both to the disease and the remedy, which commonly is the most alarming of the two.’  Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, ii. 107.  On Sept. 18, his birthday, he wrote:—­’As I came home [from church], I thought I had never begun any period of life so placidly.  I have always been accustomed to let this day pass unnoticed, but it came this time into my mind that some little festivity was not improper.  I had a dinner, and invited Allen and Levett.’ Pr. and Med. p. 199.

[429] This remark, I have no doubt, is aimed at Hawkins, who (Life, p. 553) pretends to account for this trip.

[430] Pr. and Med. p. 201.  BOSWELL.

[431] He wrote from Lichfield on the previous Oct. 27:—­’All here is gloomy; a faint struggle with the tediousness of time; a doleful confession of present misery, and the approach seen and felt of what is most dreaded and most shunned.  But such is the lot of man.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 209.

[432] The truth of this has been proved by sad experience.  BOSWELL.  Mrs. Boswell died June 4, 1789.  MALONE.

[433] See account of him in the Gent.  Mag.  Feb. 1785.  BOSWELL, see ante, i. 243, note 3.

[434] Mrs. Piozzi (Synonymy, ii. 79), quoting this verse, under Officious, says;—­’Johnson, always thinking neglect the worst misfortune that could befall a man, looked on a character of this description with less aversion than I do.’

[435]

     ‘Content thyself to be obscurely good.’

Addisons Cato, act. iv. sc. 4.

[436] In both editions of Sir John Hawkins’s Life of Dr. Johnson, ‘letter’d ignorance’ is printed.  BOSWELL.  Mr. Croker (Boswell, p.  I) says that ‘Mr. Boswell is habitually unjust to Sir J. Hawkins.’  As some kind of balance, I suppose, to this injustice, he suppresses this note.

[437] Johnson repeated this line to me thus:—­

     ‘And Labour steals an hour to die.’

But he afterwards altered it to the present reading.  BOSWELL.  This poem is printed in the Ann.  Reg. for 1783, p. 189, with the following variations:—­l. 18, for ‘ready help’ ‘useful care’:  l. 28, ’His single talent,’ ‘The single talent’; l. 33, ‘no throbs of fiery pain,’ ’no throbbing fiery pain’; l. 36, ‘and freed,’ ‘and forced.’  On the next page it is printed John Gilpin.

[438] Mr. Croker says that this line shows that ’some of Gray’s happy expressions lingered in Johnson’s memory’ He quotes a line that comes at the end of the Ode on Vicissitude—­’From busy day, the peaceful night.’  This line is not Gray’s, but Mason’s.

[439] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 14, 1780:—­’If you want events, Here is Mr. Levett just come in at fourscore from a walk to Hampstead, eight miles, in August.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 177.