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 ��Anecdotes.

��which he had always complained of, grew so exceedingly bad, that he could not stir out of his room in the court x he inhabited for many weeks together, I think months.

Mr. Thrale's attentions and my own now became so acceptable to him, that he often lamented to us the horrible condition of his mind, which he said was nearly distracted ; and though he charged us to make him odd solemn promises of secrecy on so strange a subject, yet when we waited on him one morning, and heard him, in the most pathetic terms, beg the prayers of Dr. Delap 2, who had left him as we came in, I felt excessively affected with grief, and well remember my husband involuntarily lifted up one hand to shut his mouth, from provocation at hear ing a man so wildly proclaim what he could at last persuade no one to believe ; and what, if true, would have been so very unfit to reveal.

��Mr. Thrale went away soon after, leaving me with him, and bidding me prevail on him to quit his close habitation in the court and come with us to Streatham, where I undertook the care of his health, and had the honour and happiness of contributing to its restoration 3. This task, though distressing enough sometimes, would have been less so had not my mother and he disliked one another extremely, and teized me often with

��1 Johnson's Court, Fleet-Street, into which he moved from Inner Temple Lane between July 15 and Oct. 2, 1765. Letters, i. 119, n. 2.

2 Murphy calls Dr. Delap ' Rector of Lewes.' Murphy's Johnson, p. 99. In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1765, p. 592, is his preferment to the ' united vicarages of I ford and Kings ton.' Both parishes are close to Lewes.

He was a poet and a play-wright. Kemble, writing about one of his pieces which was brought out at Drury Lane in 1786, says: 'The Captives were set at liberty last night amidst roars of laughter [It

��was a tragedy.] Cadell bought this sublime piece before it appeared for fifty pounds, agreeing to make it a hundred on its third representa tion. It has been played three times, and I dare say old Sancti mony will have no remorse in taking the other fifty.' Prior's Malone, p. 126.

3 See ante, p. 43, where he re cords : ' I returned from Streatham, Oct. i, 66, having lived there more than three months.' In his last letter to her he speaks of ' that kind ness which soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched.' Letters, ii. 407.

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