[481] ‘He had settled on his eldest son,’ says Dr. Rogers (Boswelliana, p. 129), ’the ancestral estate, with an unencumbered rental of Ll,600 a year.’  That the rental, whatever it was, was not unencumbered is shewn by the passage from Johnson’s letter, post, p. 155, note 4.  Boswell wrote to Malone in 1791 (Croker’s Boswell, p. 828):—­’The clear money on which I can reckon out of my estate is scarcely L900 a year.’

[482] Cowley’s Ode to Liberty, Stanza vi.

[483] ‘I do beseech all the succeeding heirs of entail,’ wrote Boswell in his will, ’to be kind to the tenants, and not to turn out old possessors to get a little more rent.’  Rogers’s Boswelliana, p. 186.

[484] Macleod, the Laird of Rasay.  See Boswell’s Hebrides, Sept. 8.

[485] A farm in the Isle of Skye, where Johnson wrote his Latin Ode to Mrs. Thrale. Ib. Sept. 6.

[486] Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor on Oct. 4:—­’Boswel’s (sic) father is dead, and Boswel wrote me word that he would come to London for my advice. [The] advice which I sent him is to stay at home, and [busy] himself with his own affairs.  He has a good es[tate], considerably burthened by settlements, and he is himself in debt.  But if his wife lives, I think he will be prudent.’ Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 462.

[487] Miss Burney wrote in the first week in December:—­’Dr. Johnson was in most excellent good humour and spirits.’  She describes later on a brilliant party which he attended at Miss Monckton’s on the 8th, where the people were ‘superbly dressed,’ and where he was ’environed with listeners.’  Mme. D’Arblay’s Diary, ii. 186, and 190.  See ante, p. 108, note 4.

[488] See ante,, iii. 337, where Johnson got ‘heated’ when Boswell maintained this.

[489] See ante, in. 395.

[490] The greatest part of the copy, or manuscript of The Lives of the Poets had been given by Johnson to Boswell (ante, iv. 36).

[491] Of her twelve children but these three were living.  She was forty-one years old.

[492] ‘The family,’ writes Dr. Burney, ’lived in the library, which used to be the parlour.  There they breakfasted.  Over the bookcases were hung Sir Joshua’s portraits of Mr. Thrale’s friends—­Baretti, Burke, Burney, Chambers, Garrick, Goldsmith, Johnson, Murphy, Reynolds, Lord Sandys, Lord Westcote, and in the same picture Mrs. Thrale and her eldest daughter.’  Mr. Thrale’s portrait was also there.  Dr. Burney’s Memoirs, ii. 80, and Prior’s Malone, p. 259.

[493] Pr. and Med. p. 214.  BOSWELL.

[494] Boswell omits a line that follows this prayer:—­’O Lord, so far as, &c.,—­Thrale.’  This means, I think, ’so far as it might be lawful, I prayed for Thrale.’  The following day Johnson entered:—­’I was called early.  I packed up my bundles, and used the foregoing prayer with my morning devotions, somewhat, I think, enlarged.  Being earlier than the family, I read St. Paul’s farewell in the Acts [xx. 17-end], and then read fortuitously in the gospels, which was my parting use of the library.’