THE DOCTOR'S LAST VISIT TO LICHFIELD. 431

few extracts from some of the many letters he wrote while on this jaunt will give all the needful account of his state during this period.

"The kind attention which you have so long shown to my health and happiness makes it as much a debt of gratitude as a call of interest to give you an account of what befalls me, when accident removes me from your immediate care. The journey of the first day was performed with very little sense of fatigue; the second day brought me to Lichfield, without much lassitude; but I am afraid that I could not have borne such violent agitation for many days together. I stayed five days at Lichfield, but, being unable to walk, had no great pleasure; and yesterday I came hither, where I am to try what air and attention can perform. Of any improvement in my health I cannot yet please myself with the perception. . . . The asthma has no abatement. Opiates stop the fit, so as that I can sit and sometimes lie easy, but they do not now procure me the power of motion; and I am afraid that my general strength of body does not increase. The weather, indeed, is not benign; but how low is he sunk whose strength depends upon the weather!-I am now looking into Floyer, who lived with his asthma to almost his ninetieth year. His book, by want of order, is obscure; and his asthma, I think, not of the same kind with mine. Something, however, I may perhaps learn. My appetite still continues keen enough; and, what I consider as a symptom of radical health, I have a voracious delight in raw summer fruit, of which I was less eager a few years ago.-Nowabite cura! let me inquire after the Club." [The new Club at the Essex Head.]

"TO DR. BURNEY.

...

"August 2.

"The weather, you know, has not been balmy; I am now reduced to think, and am at last content to talk, of the weather. Pride must have a fall. I have lost dear Mr. Allen; and wherever I turn, the dead or the dying meet my notice, and force my atten

432

"I STRUGGLE HARD FOR LIFE."

tion upon misery and mortality. Mrs. Burney's escape from so much danger, and her ease after so much pain, throw, however, some radiance of hope upon the gloomy prospect. May her recovery be perfect, and her continuance long. I struggle hard for life. I take physic, and take air; my friend's chariot is always ready. We have run this morning twenty-four miles, and could run forty-eight more. But who can run the race with death?”

Not so very long ago, the Doctor had run a race in the rain, and beat Baretti; but he has no chance of outstripping this competitor.

66 TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

"Ashbourne, August 19.

'Having had since our separation little to say that could please you or myself by saying, I have not been lavish of useless letters; but I flatter myself that you will partake of the pleasure with which I can now tell you, that about a week ago I felt suddenly a sensible remission of my asthma, and, consequently, a greater lightness of action and motion. Of this grateful alleviation I know not the cause, nor dare depend upon its continuance, but while it lasts I endeavour to enjoy it, and am desirous of communicating, while it lasts, my pleasure to my friends. Hitherto, dear Sir, I had written, before the post, which stays in this town but a little while, brought me your letter. Mr. Davies seems to have represented my little tendency to recover in terms too splendid. I am still restless, still weak, still watery, but the asthma is less oppressive. Poor Ramsay! On which side soever I turn, mortality presents its formidable frown. I left three old friends at Lichfield, when I was last there, and now found them all dead. I no sooner lost sight of dear Allan, than I am told that I shall see him no more. That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had sooner remembered it. Do not think me intrusive or importunate if I now call, dear Sir, upon you to remember it."

"TO MR. LANGTON.

"August 25.

"The kindness of your last letter, and my omission to answer it, begins to give you, even in my opinion, a right to recriminate,

"A NARRATIVE OF MISERY."

433

and to charge me with forgetfulness for the absent. I will, therefore, delay no longer to give an account of myself, and wish I could relate what would please either myself or my friend.-On July 13, I left London, partly in hope of help from new air and change of place, and partly excited by the sick man's impatience of the present. I got to Lichfield in a stage vehicle, with very little fatigue, in two days, and had the consolation to find that since my last visit my three old acquaintances are all dead.-July 20, I went to Ashbourne, where I have been till now; the house in which we live is repairing. I live in too much solitude, and am often deeply dejected. I wish we were nearer, and rejoice in your removal to London. A friend, at once cheerful and serious, is a great acquisition. Let us not neglect one another for the little time which Providence allows us to hope.-Of my health I cannot tell you, what my wishes persuaded me to expect, that it is much improved by the season or by remedies. I am sleepless; my legs grow weary with a very few steps, and the water breaks its boundaries in some degree. The asthma, however, has remitted; my breath is still much obstructed, but is more free than it was. Nights of watchfulness produce torpid days; I read very little, though I am alone; for I am tempted to supply in the day what I lost in bed. This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery. Yet am I so much better than in the beginning of the year, that I ought to be ashamed of complaining. I now sit and write with very little sensibility of pain or weakness; but when I rise I shall find my legs betraying me. which you mentioned, I have no immediate need. ever, for me, unless some exigence requires it. will show you certainly, when you would see them; but I am a little angry at you for not keeping minutes of your own acceptum et expensum, and think a little time might be spared from Aristophanes for the res familiares. Forgive me, for I mean well. hope, dear Sir, that you and Lady Rothes, and all the young people, too many to enumerate, are well and happy. God bless you all."

Of the money

Keep it, howYour papers I

F F

"Lichfield, October 20. "When you were here, you were pleased, as I am told, to think my absence an inconvenience. I should certainly have been very glad to give so skilful a lover of antiquities any information about my native place, of which, however, I know not much, and have reason to believe that not much is known. Though I have not given you any amusement, I have received amusement from you. At Ashbourne, where I had very little company, I had the luck to borrow Mr. Bowyer's Life;' a book so full of contemporary history, that a literary man must find some of his old friends. I thought that I could now and then have told you some hints worth your notice; and perhaps we may talk a life over. I hope we shall be much together; you must now be to me what you were before, and what dear Mr. Allen was, besides. He was taken unexpectedly away, but I think he was a very good man. I have made little progress in recovery. very sleepless but I live on and hope."

I am very weak, and

"I live on and hope:" the Doctor had determined not to ring in. At this very time he said to a friend one day, "I will be conquered I will not capitulate."

His social feelings also were warm and active as ever. "Sir," said he, while old companions were dropping around him like withered leaves, and himself hurrying fast to the tomb, "I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance." And the Doctor carried his social theory into practice, here and now, by forming an intimacy with a young clergymanMr. Henry White-to whom he communicated one little bit of information, without the record of which this biography would seem, to ourselves at least, very imperfect. Speaking of the days of his youth, Johnson said, "I cannot in general accuse myself of having been an undutiful son. Once, indeed, I was disobedient; I refused to attend my father to Uttoxeter market. Pride was the source of that refusal, and the remembrance of it was painful. A few years ago I desired to atone for this fault; I went to Uttoxeter in very bad weather, and stood for a considerable time bareheaded in the rain, on the spot where my father's stall used to

RETURN TO LONDON.

435

stand. In contrition I stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory."

What a beautiful blending of superstition and tenderness of heart!

Johnson loved his native Lichfield dearly: we have seen how he has been again and again irresistibly drawn towards it, especially of late years; and the readers of "The English Dictionary" will perhaps remember that under the word Lich the author suddenly breaks out into this apostrophe "Salve, magna parens !" [Hail, great mother!] While there, on this last visit, the Doctor ordered the gravestone and inscription over Elizabeth Blaney to be carefully renewed: a beautiful manifestation of feeling, linking his own pious memories to the tenderest fact in the life of his dead father.

But, notwithstanding the Doctor's love of home and all its endearing associations, his true life had, after all, been in London -and there he was doomed to die.

On his way back to the great city he spent a few days with his old schoolfellow, Mr. Hector, in Birmingham. "He was very solicitous with me," writes Hector, "to recollect some of our most early transactions, and transmit them to him; for I perceived nothing gave him greater pleasure than calling to mind those days of our innocence."

The Doctor then proceeded to Oxford, where he was again kindly received by his friend Adams, and stayed four or five days. "We had much serious talk together," says Adams, "for which I ought to be the better as long as I live."

He arrived in London on the 16th of November, and next day wrote the following kindly note of remembrance to Dr. Burneythe last this valued friend ever received from the man he so fondly loved and so highly honoured :—

“Mr. Johnson, who came home last night, sends his respects to dear Dr. Burney, and all the dear Burneys, little and great."

Shortly after Johnson's return to the metropolis both asthma and dropsy became more violent; and it was soon evident that