[1233] ‘He burned,’ writes Mrs. Piozzi, ’many letters in the last week, I am told, and those written by his mother drew from him a flood of tears.  Mr. Sastres saw him cast a melancholy look upon their ashes, which he took up and examined to see if a word was still legible.’—­Piozzi Letters, ii. 383.

[1234] Boswell in his Hebrides (post, v. 53) says that Johnson, starting northwards on his tour, left in a drawer in Boswell’s house ’one volume of a pretty full and curious Diary of his Life, of which I have,’ he continues, ‘a few fragments.’  The other volume, we may conjecture, Johnson took with him, for Boswell had seen both, and apparently seen them only once.  He mentions (ante, i. 27) that these ‘few fragments’ had been transferred to him by the residuary legatee (Francis Barber).  One large fragment, which was published after Barber’s death, he could never have seen, for he never quotes from it (ante, i. 35, note 1).

[1235] One of these volumes, Sir John Hawkins informs us, he put into his pocket; for which the excuse he states is, that he meant to preserve it from falling into the hands of a person whom he describes so as to make it sufficiently clear who is meant; ’having strong reasons (said he,) to suspect that this man might find and make an ill use of the book.’  Why Sir John should suppose that the gentleman alluded to would act in this manner, he has not thought fit to explain.  But what he did was not approved of by Johnson; who, upon being acquainted of it without delay by a friend, expressed great indignation, and warmly insisted on the book being delivered up; and, afterwards, in the supposition of his missing it, without knowing by whom it had been taken, he said, ’Sir, I should have gone out of the world distrusting half mankind.’  Sir John next day wrote a letter to Johnson, assigning reasons for his conduct; upon which Johnson observed to Mr. Langton, ’Bishop Sanderson could not have dictated a better letter.  I could almost say, Melius est sic penituisse quam non errasse.’  The agitation into which Johnson was thrown by this incident, probably made him hastily burn those precious records which must ever be regretted.  BOSWELL.  According to Mr. Croker, Steevens was the man whom Hawkins said that he suspected.  Porson, in his witty Panegyrical Epistle on Hawkins v.  Johnson (Gent.  Mag. 1787, pp. 751-3, and Porson Tracts, p. 341), says:—­’I shall attempt a translation [of Melius est, &c.] for the benefit of your mere English readers:—­There is more joy over a sinner that repenteth than over a just person that needeth no repentance.  And we know from an authority not to be disputed (Hawkins’s Life, p. 406) that Johnson was a great lover of penitents.

“God put it in the mind to take it hence,
That thou might’st win the more thy [Johnson’s] love,
Pleading so wisely in excuse of it.”