Dearer than any such praise was the approval of Johnson’s wife.  She told him that, well as she had thought of him before, she had not considered him equal to such a performance.  The voice that so charmed him was soon to be silenced for ever.  Mrs. Johnson died (March 17th, 1752) three days after the appearance of the last Rambler.  The man who has passed through such a trial knows well that, whatever may be in store for him in the dark future, fate can have no heavier blow in reserve.  Though Johnson once acknowledged to Boswell, when in a placid humour, that happier days had come to him in his old age than in his early life, he would probably have added that though fame and friendship and freedom from the harrowing cares of poverty might cause his life to be more equably happy, yet their rewards could represent but a faint and mocking reflection of the best moments of a happy marriage.  His strong mind and tender nature reeled under the blow.  Here is one pathetic little note written to the friend, Dr. Taylor, who had come to him in his distress.  That which first announced the calamity, and which, said Taylor, “expressed grief in the strongest manner he had ever read,” is lost.

“Dear Sir,—­Let me have your company and instruction.  Do not live away from me.  My distress is great.

“Pray desire Mrs. Taylor to inform me what mourning I should buy for my mother and Miss Porter, and bring a note in writing with you.

“Remember me in your prayers, for vain is the help of man.

“I am, dear sir,

“SAM.  JOHNSON.”

We need not regret that a veil is drawn over the details of the bitter agony of his passage through the valley of the shadow of death.  It is enough to put down the wails which he wrote long afterwards when visibly approaching the close of all human emotions and interests:—­

“This is the day on which, in 1752, dear Letty died.  I have now uttered a prayer of repentance and contrition; perhaps Letty knows that I prayed for her.  Perhaps Letty is now praying for me.  God help me.  Thou, God, art merciful, hear my prayers and enable me to trust in Thee.

“We were married almost seventeen years, and have now been parted thirty.”

It seems half profane, even at this distance of time, to pry into grief so deep and so lasting.  Johnson turned for relief to that which all sufferers know to be the only remedy for sorrow—­hard labour.  He set to work in his garret, an inconvenient room, “because,” he said, “in that room only I never saw Mrs. Johnson.”  He helped his friend Hawkesworth in the Adventurer, a new periodical of the Rambler kind; but his main work was the Dictionary, which came out at last in 1755.  Its appearance was the occasion of an explosion of wrath which marks an epoch in our literature.  Johnson, as we have seen, had dedicated the Plan to Lord Chesterfield; and his language implies that they had been to some extent in personal communication.