John Nichols,Mr.Cooke,Mr.Joddrel,Mr.Paradise,Dr.Horsley,Mr.Windham,I shall sufficiently obviate the misrepresentation of it by Sir John Hawkins,as if it had been a low ale-house association,by which Johnson was degraded.Johnson himself,like his namesake Old Ben,composed the Rules of his Club.
I was in Scotland when this Club was founded,and during all the winter.Johnson,however,declared I should be a member,and invented a word upon the occasion:Boswell (said he,)is a very CLUBABLE man.'When I came to town I was proposed by Mr.
Barrington,and chosen.I believe there are few societies where there is better conversation or more decorum,several of us resolved to continue it after our great founder was removed by death.Other members were added;and now,above eight years since that loss,we go on happily.--BOSWELL.
In the end of this year he was seized with a spasmodick 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,a dropsy.It was a very severe winter,which probably aggravated his complaints;and the solitude in which Mr.Levett and Mrs.Williams had left him,rendered his life very gloomy.Mrs.Desmoulins,who still lived,was herself so very ill,that she could contribute very little to his relief.He,however,had none of that unsocial shyness which we commonly see in people afflicted with sickness.He did not hide his head from the world,in solitary abstraction;he did not deny himself to the visits of his friends and acquaintances;but at all times,when he was not overcome by sleep,was ready for conversation as in his best days.
'TO MRS.LUCY PORTER,IN LICHFIELD.
'DEAR MADAM,--You may perhaps think me negligent that I have not written to you again upon the loss of your brother;but condolences and consolations are such common and such useless things,that the omission of them is no great crime:and my own diseases occupy my mind,and engage my care.My nights are miserably restless,and my days,therefore,are heavy.I try,however,to hold up my head as high as I can.
'I am sorry that your health is impaired;perhaps the spring and the summer may,in some degree,restore it:but if not,we must submit to the inconveniences of time,as to the other dispensations of Eternal Goodness.Pray for me,and write to me,or let Mr.
Pearson write for you.I am,&c.
'London,Nov.29,1783.'
'SAM.JOHNSON.'
1784:AETAT.75.]--And now I am arrived at the last year of the life of SAMUEL JOHNSON,a year in which,although passed in severe indisposition,he nevertheless gave many evidences of the continuance of those wondrous powers of mind,which raised him so high in the intellectual world.His conversation and his letters of this year were in no respect inferiour to those of former years.
In consequence of Johnson's request that I should ask our physicians about his case,and desire Sir Alexander Dick to send his opinion,I transmitted him a letter from that very amiable Baronet,then in his eighty-first year,with his faculties as entire as ever;and mentioned his expressions to me in the note accompanying it:'With my most affectionate wishes for Dr.
Johnson's recovery,in which his friends,his country,and all mankind have so deep a stake:'and at the same time a full opinion upon his case by Dr.Gillespie,who,like Dr.Cullen,had the advantage of having passed through the gradations of surgery and pharmacy,and by study and practice had attained to such skill,that my father settled on him two hundred pounds a year for five years,and fifty pounds a year during his life,as an honorarium to secure his particular attendance.
I also applied to three of the eminent physicians who had chairs in our celebrated school of medicine at Edinburgh,Doctors Cullen,Hope,and Monro.
All of them paid the most polite attention to my letter,and its venerable object.Dr.Cullen's words concerning him were,'It would give me the greatest pleasure to be of any service to a man whom the publick properly esteem,and whom I esteem and respect as much as I do Dr.Johnson.'Dr.Hope's,'Few people have a better claim on me than your friend,as hardly a day passes that I do not ask his opinion about this or that word.'Dr.Monro's,'I most sincerely join you in sympathizing with that very worthy and ingenious character,from whom his country has derived much instruction and entertainment.'
'TO THE REVEREND DR.TAYLOR,ASHBOURNE,DERBYSHIRE.
'DEAR SIR,--What can be the reason that I hear nothing from you?Ihope nothing disables you from writing.What I have seen,and what I have felt,gives me reason to fear every thing.Do not omit giving me the comfort of knowing,that after all my losses I have yet a friend left.
'I want every comfort.My life is very solitary and very cheerless.Though it has pleased GOD wonderfully to deliver me from the dropsy,I am yet very weak,and have not passed the door since the 13th of December.I hope for some help from warm weather,which will surely come in time.
'I could not have the consent of the physicians to go to church yesterday;I therefore received the holy sacrament at home,in the room where I communicated with dear Mrs.Williams,a little before her death.O!my friend,the approach of death is very dreadful.
I am afraid to think on that which I know I cannot avoid.It is vain to look round and round for that help which cannot be had.
Yet we hope and hope,and fancy that he who has lived to-day may live to-morrow.But let us learn to derive our hope only from GOD.
'In the mean time,let us be kind to one another.I have no friend now living but you and Mr.Hector,that was the friend of my youth.
Do not neglect,dear Sir,yours affectionately,'London,Easter-Monday,April 12,1784.'
'SAM.JOHNSON.'
