Page:An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson.djvu/127

 and faction, to carry such a scheme into execution, will, in all probability, be respected by posterity, as the Mæcenas of letters.

We now take leave of Dr. Johnson, as an author. Four volumes of his Lives of the Poets were published in 1778, and the work was completed in 1781. Should biography fall again into disuse, there will not always be a Johnson to look back through a century, and give a body of critical and moral instruction. In April, 1781, he lost his friend Mr. Thrale. His own words, in his diary, will best tell that melancholy event. "On Wednesday, the 11th of April, was buried my dear friend Mr. Thrale, who died on Wednesday, the 4th, and with him were buried many of my hopes and pleasures. About five, I think, on Wednesday morning, he expired. I felt almost the last flutter of his pulse, and looked, for the last time, upon the face, that, for fifteen years before, had never been turned upon me but with respect and benignity. Farewel: may God, that delighteth in mercy, have had mercy on thee! I had constantly prayed for him before his death. The decease of him, "from