’My health seems in general to improve; but I have been troubled for many weeks with a vexatious catarrh, which is sometimes sufficiently distressful.  I have not found any great effects from bleeding and physick; and am afraid, that I must expect help from brighter days and softer air.

’Write to me now and then; and whenever any good befalls you, make haste to let me know it, for no one will rejoice at it more than, dear Sir, your most humble servant,

‘Sam.  Johnson.’

‘London, Feb. 24, 1773.’

‘You continue to stand very high in the favour of Mrs. Thrale.’

While a former edition of my work was passing through the press, I was unexpectedly favoured with a packet from Philadelphia, from Mr. James Abercrombie, a gentleman of that country, who is pleased to honour me with very high praise of my Life of Dr. Johnson.  To have the fame of my illustrious friend, and his faithful biographer, echoed from the New World is extremely flattering; and my grateful acknowledgements shall be wafted across the Atlantick.  Mr. Abercrombie has politely conferred on me a considerable additional obligation, by transmitting to me copies of two letters from Dr. Johnson to American gentlemen.

On Saturday, April 3, the day after my arrival in London this year, I went to his house late in the evening, and sat with Mrs. Williams till he came home.  I found in the London Chronicle, Dr. Goldsmith’s apology to the publick for beating Evans, a bookseller, on account of a paragraph in a newspaper published by him, which Goldsmith thought impertinent to him and to a lady of his acquaintance.  The apology was written so much in Dr. Johnson’s manner, that both Mrs. Williams and I supposed it to be his; but when he came home, he soon undeceived us.  When he said to Mrs. Williams, ’Well, Dr. Goldsmith’s manifesto has got into your paper;’ I asked him if Dr. Goldsmith had written it, with an air that made him see I suspected it was his, though subscribed by Goldsmith.  Johnson.  ’Sir, Dr. Goldsmith would no more have asked me to write such a thing as that for him, than he would have asked me to feed him with a spoon, or to do anything else that denoted his imbecility.  I as much believe that he wrote it, as if I had seen him do it.  Sir, had he shewn it to any one friend, he would not have been allowed to publish it.  He has, indeed, done it very well; but it is a foolish thing well done.  I suppose he has been so much elated with the success of his new comedy, that he has thought every thing that concerned him must be of importance to the publick.’  Boswell.  ’I fancy, Sir, this is the first time that he has been engaged in such an adventure.’  Johnson.  ’Why, Sir, I believe it is the first time he has beat; he may have been beaten before.  This, Sir, is a new plume to him.’

At Mr. Thrale’s, in the evening, he repeated his usual paradoxical declamation against action in publick speaking.  ’Action can have no effect upon reasonable minds.  It may augment noise, but it never can enforce argument.’