Goldsmith used to say, in the witty words of one of Cibber’s comedies, “There is no arguing with Johnson, for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.”

In 1782 his complaints increased, and the history of his life this year is little more than a mournful recital of the variations of his illness.  In one of his letters to Mr. Hector he says, indeed, “My health has been, from my twentieth year, such as has seldom afforded me a single day of ease.”  At a time, then, when he was less able than he had once been to sustain a shock, he was suddenly deprived of Mr. Levett, who died on January 17.  But, although his health was tottering, the powers of his mind were in no ways impaired, as his letters and conversation showed.  Moreover, during the last three or four years of his life he may be said to have mellowed.

His love of little children, which he discovered upon all occasions, calling them “pretty dears,” and giving them sweetmeats, was an undoubted proof of the real humanity and gentleness of his disposition.  His uncommon kindness to his servants, and serious concern, not only for their comfort in this world, but their happiness in the next, was another unquestionable evidence of what all who were intimately acquainted with him knew to be true.  Nor would it be just, under this head, to omit the fondness that he showed for animals which he had taken under his protection.  I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat, for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants, having that trouble, should take a dislike to the poor creature.

XII.—­The Last Year

In April, 1783, Johnson had a paralytic stroke, which deprived him, for a time, of the powers of speech.  But he recovered so quickly that in July he was able to make a visit to Mr. Langton, at Rochester, where he passed about a fortnight, and made little excursions as easily as at any time of his life.  In August he went as far as the neighbourhood of Salisbury, to Heale, the seat of William Bowles, Esq.; and it was while he was here that he had a letter from his physician, Dr. Brocklesby, acquainting him of the death of Mrs. Williams, which affected him a good deal.

In the end of 1783, in addition to his gout and his catarrhous cough, he was seized with a spasmodic asthma of such violence that he was confined to the house in great pain, being sometimes obliged to sit all night in his chair, a recumbent posture being so hurtful to his respiration that he could not endure lying in bed; and there came upon him at the same time that oppressive and fatal disease of dropsy.  His cough he used to cure by taking laudanum and syrup of poppies, and he was a great believer in the advantages of being bled.  But this year the very severe winter aggravated his complaints, and the asthma confined him to the house for more than three months; though he got almost complete relief from the dropsy by natural evacuation in February.