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 ��When one day he had at my house taken tincture of antimony instead of emetic wine, for a vomit, he was himself the person to direct us what to do for him, and managed with as much coolness and deliberation as if he had been prescribing for an indifferent person. Though on another occasion, when he had lamented in the most piercing terms his approaching dissolution, and con jured me solemnly to tell him what I thought, while Sir Richard Jebb x was perpetually on the road to Streatham, and Mr. Johnson seemed to think himself neglected if the physician left him for an hour only, I made him a steady, but as I thought a very gentle harangue, in which I confirmed all that the Doctor had been saying, how no present danger could be expected ; but that his age and continued ill health must naturally accelerate the arrival of that hour which can be escaped by none 2 : ' And this (says Johnson, rising in great anger) is the voice of female friendship I suppose, when the hand of the hangman would be softer.'

Another day, when he was ill, and exceedingly low-spirited, and persuaded that death was not far distant, I appeared before him in a dark-coloured gown, which his bad sight, and worse apprehensions, made him mistake for an iron-grey. * Why do you delight (said he) thus to thicken the gloom of misery that surrounds me ? is not here sufficient accumulation of horror with out anticipated mourning?' This is not mourning Sir (said I), drawing the curtain, that the light might fall upon the silk, and shew it was a purple mixed with green. * Well, well (replied he, changing his voice), you little creatures should never wear those sort of clothes however ; they are unsuitable in every way. What ! have not all insects gay colours 3 ! ' I relate these

pass over now with the careless she was sixty-two years old], de- glance of frigid indifference.' Letters, scribes her as "skipping about like ii. 300. a kid, quite a figure of fun, in a tiger 1 Ib. ii. 148, n. 2. skin shawl, lined with scarlet, and 3 Another time, when he was very only five colours upon her head- ill, she had written to him 'about dress -on the top of a flaxen wig dying with a grace.' Ib. ii. 384. a bandeau of blue velvet, a bit of 3 Quoted in the Life, i. 495. tiger ribbon, a white beaver hat and ' A lady who met her on her way plume of black feathers as gay as to Wynnstay in January, 1803 [when a lark." ' Hayward's Ptozzi, i. 346.

instances

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