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 ��breakfast for him till the bell rung for dinner, though much dis pleased if the toilet was neglected, and though much of the time we passed together was spent in blaming or deriding, very justly, my neglect of ceconomy, and waste of that money which might eiake many families happy. The original reason of our connec tion, his particularly disordered health and spirits, had been long at an end r, and he had no other ailments than old age and general infirmity 2, which every professor of medicine was ardently zealous and generally attentive to palliate, and to contribute all in their power for the prolongation of a life so valuable. Veneration for his virtue, reverence for his talents, delight in his conversation, and habitual endurance of a yoke my husband first put upon me, and of which he contentedly bore his share for sixteen or seventeen years, made me go on so long with Mr. Johnson ; but the perpetual confinement I will own to have been terrifying in the first years of our friendship, and irksome in the V last ; nor could I pretend to support it without help, when my coadjutor was no more 3. To the assistance we gave him, the shelter our house afforded to his uneasy fancies, and to the pains we took to sooth or repress them, the world perhaps is indebted for the three political pamphlets 4, the new edition and correction of his Dictionary, and for the Poets' Lives, which he would scarce have lived, I think, and kept his faculties entire, to have written, had not incessant care been exerted at the time of

having lived with the Thrales five 2 Her readers would hardly infer

years and a half. Letters, \. 403, that he had had a stroke of palsy,

n.6. He cannot therefore speak of the a dangerous sarcocele, asthma, and

time after Mr. Thrale's death. The dropsy.

cheerfulness of the Streatham life 3 Boswell, quoting this passage,

during the life-time of its master is continues :' Alas! how different is

shown in Miss Burney's Diaries. this from the declarations which I

1 Ante, p. 234. What had come have heard Mrs. Thrale make in

to an end was the life of Mr. Thrale his life-time, without a single mur-

who, perhaps chiefly from compas- mur against any peculiarities, or

sion, had at first made Johnson an against any one circumstance which

inmate of his house, but who came attended their intimacy.' Jb. iv.

to take so much delight in his com- 340.

pany that, as his wife said, ' he would 4 He wrote four political pam-

go no -where that he could help with- phlets. out him.' Life, iii. 28, n.

his

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