[1159] It is a most agreeable circumstance attending the publication of this Work, that Mr. Hector has survived his illustrious schoolfellow so many years; that he still retains his health and spirits; and has gratified me with the following acknowledgement:  ’I thank you, most sincerely thank you, for the great and long continued entertainment your Life of Dr. Johnson has afforded me, and others, of my particular friends.’  Mr. Hector, besides setting me right as to the verses on a sprig of Myrtle, (see vol. i. p. 92, note,) has favoured me with two English odes, written by Dr. Johnson, at an early period of his life, which will appear in my edition of his poems.  BOSWELL.  See ante, i. 16, note 1.

[1160] The editor of the Biographia Britannica.  Ante, iii. 174.

[1161] On Dec. 23, Miss Adams wrote to a friend:—­’We are all under the sincerest grief for the loss of poor Dr. Johnson.  He spent three or four days with my father at Oxford, and promised to come again; as he was, he said, nowhere so happy.’ Pemb.  Coll.  MSS.

[1162] See ante, p. 293.

[1163] Mr. Strahan says (Preface, p. iv.) that Johnson, being hindered by illness from revising these prayers, ’determined to give the MSS., without revision, in charge to me.  Accordingly one morning, on my visiting him by desire at an early hour, he put these papers into my hands, with instructions for committing them to the press, and with a promise to prepare a sketch of his own life to accompany them.’  Whatever Johnson wished about the prayers, it passes belief that he ever meant for the eye of the world these minute accounts of his health and his feelings.  Some parts indeed Mr. Strahan himself suppressed, as the Pemb.  Coll.  MSS. shew (ante, p. 84, note 4).  It is curious that one portion at least fell into other hands (ante, ii. 476).  There are other apparent gaps in the diary which raise the suspicion that it was only fragments that Mr. Strahan obtained.  On the other hand Mr. Strahan had nothing to gain by the publication beyond notoriety (see his Preface, p. vi.).  Dr. Adams, whose name is mentioned in the preface, expressed in a letter to the Gent.  Mag. 1785, p. 755, his disapproval of the publication.  Mr. Courtenay (Poetical Review, ed. 1786, p. 7), thus attacked Mr. Strahan:—­

     ’Let priestly S—­h—­n in a godly fit
     The tale relate, in aid of Holy Writ;
     Though candid Adams, by whom David fell [A],
     Who ancient miracles sustained so well,
     To recent wonders may deny his aid,
     Nor own a pious brother of the trade.’

[A] The Rev. Dr. Adams of Oxford, distinguished for his answer to David Hume’s Essay on Miracles.