[1244] ’To his friend Dr. Burney he said a few hours before he died, taking the Doctor’s hands within his, and casting his eyes towards Heaven with a look of the most fervent piety, “My dear friend, while you live do all the good you can.”  Seward’s Biographiana, p. 601

[1245] Mr. Hoole, senior, records of this day:—­’Dr. Johnson exhorted me to lead a better life than he had done.  “A better life than you, my dear Sir:”  I repeated.  He replied warmly, “Don’t compliment not.”  Croker’s Boswell, p. 844

[1246] See _ ante_, p. 293

[1247] The French historian, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, 1553-1617, author of Historia sui Temporis in 138 books.

[1248] See ante, ii. 42, note 2.

[1249] Mr. Hutton was occasionally admitted to the royal breakfast-table.  “Hutton,” said the King to him one morning, “is it true that you Moravians marry without any previous knowledge of each other?” “Yes, may it please your majesty,” returned Hutton; “our marriages are quite royal” Hannah More’s Memoirs, i. 318.  One of his female-missionaries for North American said to Dr. Johnson:—­’Whether my Saviour’s service may be best carried on here, or on the coast of Labrador, ’tis Mr. Hutton’s business to settle.  I will do my part either in a brick-house or a snow-house with equal alacrity.’  Piozzi’s Synonymy, ii. 120.  He is described also in the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, i. 251, 291.

[1250] Ante, ii. 402.

[1251] Burke said of Hussey, who was his friend and correspondent, that in his character he had made ’that very rare union of the enlightened statesman with the ecclesiastic.’  Burke’s Corres. iv. 270.

[1252] Boswell refers, I believe, to Fordyce’s epitaph on Johnson in the Gent.  Mag. 1785, p. 412, or possibly to an Ode on p. 50 of his poems.

[1253] ’Being become very weak and helpless it was thought necessary that a man should watch with him all night; and one was found in the neighbourhood for half a crown a night.’  Hawkins’s Life of Johnson, p. 589.

[1254] It was on Nov. 30 that he repeated these lines.  See Croker’s Boswell, p. 843.

[1255] British Synonymy, i. 359.  Mrs. Piozzi, to add to the wonder, says that these verses were ‘improviso,’ forgetting that Johnson wrote to her on Aug 8, 1780 (Piozzi Letters, ii. 175):—­’You have heard in the papers how —–­ is come to age.  I have enclosed a short song of congratulation which you must not shew to anybody.  It is odd that it should come into anybody’s head.  I hope you will read it with candour; it is, I believe, one of the author’s first essays in that way of writing, and a beginner is always to be treated with tenderness.’  That it was Sir John Lade who had come of age is shewn by the entry of his birth, Aug. 1, 1759, in the Gent.  Mag. 1759, p. 392.  He was the nephew and ward of Mr. Thrale,