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 will be most thankfully accepted under any conditions that you are pleased to prescribe. They shall be preserved among the few MSS. and rarer Books which are locked up from view and will greatly enrich this collection. He tells me also that he apprized you of a sort of promise which he thought the Doctor had made us of his Picture. But this is more than we have a right to say. We had indeed formed to ourselves an expectation of this kind which was grounded wholly on the following incident. The Doctor found in my Parlour some time ago a Print of himself which belonged to our Common Room : under which I had just then caused to be written a Line of his Favourite Miss Hannah More, 'And is not Johnson ours himself an Host 1 ,' with which he seemed well pleased. This gave occasion to my Daughter to whom he was always very partial 2 to say [piece torn off] to have his Picture in the Hall, and to hope that he would oblige us with it. His answer was that he had no Right to be placed among the Founders and Benefactors of the College in the Hall ; that the most he could aspire to would be a Place in the Lodgings, if the Master could find Room for his Picture there. This we were willing to construe as an intention to comply with our Wishes and flattered ourselves accordingly. Should his Executors incline to put the same construction upon this, and have it in their power to fulfill this intention, they would confer the highest obligation upon us. It would indeed be a singular pleasure and matter of useful Reflection to have his Portrait always before us as the Memorial of one who excelled in every Virtue and was so great an Ornament to the College 3. The Doctor's last visit was I believe to this College.

��1 Ante, ii. 199. woode, hangs in the Common Room.

2 ' She happened to tell him that A copy of the portrait of him by a little coffee-pot, in which she had Reynolds in the National Gallery, made his coffee, was the only thing taken by Miss Leveson, the daughter she could call her own. He turned of the Scribe of the Johnson Club, to her with a complacent gallantry: and given by her to the College, " Don't say so, my dear : I hope you hangs in the hall. There also is to be don't reckon my heart as nothing." ' seen a copy of a portraitof Dr. Adams; Life, iv. 292. it is to be hoped that some day

3 His portrait by Reynolds, the it will be replaced by the original gift of the late Mr. Andrew Spottis- picture.

We

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