"Your health, when I saw you, was much improved. You will be prudent enough not to put it in danger. I hope, when we meet again, we shall congratulate each other upon fair prospects of longer life; though what are the pleasures of the longest life, when placed in comparison with a happy death? I am, dear Sir, "Your's most affectionately, "London, March 21, 1782. "SAM. JOHNSON." 1782. Ætat. 73. 66 DEAR SIR; TO THE SAME. [Without a date, but supposed to be "THAT you and dear Mrs. Careless should have care or curiosity about my health, gives me that pleasure which every man feels from finding himself not forgotten. In age we feel again that love of our native place and our early friends, which in the bustle or amusements of middle life, were overborne and suspended. You and I should now naturally cling to one another: we have outlived most of those who could pretend to rival us in each other's kindness. In our walk through life we have dropped our companions, and are now to pick up such as chance may offer us, or to travel on alone. You, indeed, have a sister, with whom you can divide the day: I have no natural friend left; but Providence has been pleased to preserve me from neglect; I have not wanted such alleviations of life as friendship could supply. My health has been, from my twentieth year, such as has seldom afforded me a single day of ease; but it is at least not worse: and I sometimes make myself believe that it is better. - 1782: My disorders are, however, still sufficiently opEtat. 73. Pressive. "I think of seeing Staffordshire again this autumn, and intend to find my way through Birmingham, where I hope to see you and dear Mrs. Careless well. I am, Sir, "Your affectionate friend, "SAM. JOHNSON." I wrote to him at different dates; regretted that I could not come to London this spring, but hoped we should meet somewhere in the summer; mentioned the state of my affairs, and suggested hopes of some preferment; informed him, that as "The Beauties of Johnson," had been published in London, some obscure scribbler had published at Edinburgh, what he called "The Deformities of Johnson." 66 TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. DEAR SIR, "THE pleasure which we used to receive from each other on Good-Friday and Easter-day, we must be this year content to miss. Let us, however, pray ' for each other, and hope to see one another yet from time to time with mutual delight. My disorder has been a cold, which impeded the organs of respiration, and kept me many weeks in a state of great uneasiness; but by repeated phlebotomy it is now relieved; and next to the recovery of Mrs. Boswell, I flatter myself, that you will rejoice at mine. ،، What we shall do in the summer, it is yet too early to consider. You want to know what you shall do now; I do not think this time of bustle and 1 confusions like to produce any advantage to you. 1782. Every man has those to reward and gratify who To come have contributed to his advancement. "The Beauties of Johnson' are said to have got money to the collector; if the Deformities' have the same success, I shall be still a more extensive benefactor. "Make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell, who is I hope reconciled to me; and to the young people whom I never have offended. "You never told me the success of your plea against the Solicitors. I am, dear Sir, "Your most affectionate, "London, March 28, 1782, 5 "SAM. JOHNSON." [On the preceding day the Ministry had been changed. M.] Ætat. 73. 1782. Etat. 73. Notwithstanding his afflicted state of body and mind this year, the following correspondence affords a proof not only of his benevolence and conscientious readiness to relieve a good man from errour, but by his cloathing one of the sentiments in his "Rambler" in different language, not inferiour to that of the original, shews his extraordinary command of clear and forcible expression. A clergyman at Bath wrote to him, that in " The Morning Chronicle," a passage in "The Beauties of Johnson," article DEATH, had been pointed out as supposed by some readers to recommend suicide, the words being, "To die is the fate of man ; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly;" and respectfully suggesting to him, that such an erroneous notion of any sentence in the writings of an acknowledged friend of religion and virtue, should not pass uncontradicted. Johnson thus answered the clergyman's letter: "BEING now in the country in a state of recovery, as I hope, from a very oppressive disorder, I cannot neglect the acknowledgement of your Christian letter. The book called "The Beauties of Johnson," is the production of I know not whom ; I never saw it but by casual inspection, and considered myself as utterly disengaged from its consequences. Of the passage you mention, I remember some notice in some paper; but knowing that it must be misrepresented, I thought of it no more, nor do I know where to find it in my own books. I am accustomed to think little of newspapers; but an opinion so weighty and serious as yours has determined me to do, what I should without your seasonable ad- 1782. monition, have omitted: and I will direct my thought 6 to be shewn in its true state. If I could find the passage I would direct you to it. I suppose the tenour is this:- Acute diseases are the immediate and inevitable strokes of Heaven; but of them the pain is short, and the conclusion speedy; chronical disorders, by which we are suspended in tedious torture between life and death, are commonly the effect of our own misconduct and intemperance. To die, &c.-This, Sir, you see is all true and all blameless. I hope some time in the next week, to have all rectified. My health has been lately much shaken; if you favour me with any answer, it will be a comfort to me to know that I have your prayers. Ætat. 73. This letter, as might be expected, had its full effect, and the clergyman acknowledged it in grateful and pious terms." "What follows, appeared in the Morning Chronicle of May 29, 1782.-" A correspondent having mentioned, in the Morning Chronicle of December 12, the last clause of the following paragraph, as seeming to favour suicide; we are requested to print the whole passage, that its true meaning may appear, which is not to recommend suicide but exercise. "Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disjoined by an easy separation. It was a principle among the antients, that acute diseases are from Heaven, and chronical from ourselves; the dart of death, indeed, falls from Heaven, but we poison it by our own misconduct: to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly." 7 The Correspondence may be seen at length in the Gentleman's Magazine, Feb, 1786, |