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I wrote to him at different dates; regretted that I could not come to London this spring, but hoped we should meet somewhere in the summer; mentioned the state of my affairs, and suggested hopes of some preferment; informed him, that as The Beauties of Johnson had been published in London, some obscure scribbler1069 had published at Edinburgh what he called The deformities of Johnson.

‘To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

‘DEAR SIR, – The pleasure which we used to receive from each other on Good-Friday and Easter-day, we must be this year content to miss. Let us, however, pray for each other, and hope to see one another yet from time to time with mutual delight. My disorder has been a cold, which impeded the organs of respiration, and kept me many weeks in a state of great uneasiness; but by repeated phlebotomy1070 it is now relieved; and next to the recovery of Mrs. Boswell, I flatter myself, that you will rejoice at mine.

‘What we shall do in the summer it is yet too early to consider. You want to know what you shall do now; I do not think this time of bustle and confusion likely to produce any advantage to you. Every man has those to reward and gratify who have contributed to his advancement. To come hither with such expectations at the expence of borrowed money, which, I find, you know not where to borrow, can hardly be considered as prudent. I am sorry to find, what your solicitation seems to imply, that you have already gone the whole length of your credit. This is to set the quiet of your whole life at hazard. If you anticipate your inheritance, you can at last inherit nothing; all that you receive must pay for the past. You must get a place, or pine in penury, with the empty name of a great estate. Poverty, my dear friend, is so great an evil, and pregnant with so much temptation, and so much misery, that I cannot but earnestly enjoin you to avoid it. Live on what you have; live if you can on less; do not borrow either for vanity or pleasure; the vanity will end in shame, and the pleasure in regret: stay therefore at home, till you have saved money for your journey hither.

‘The Beauties of Johnson are said to have got money to the collector; if the Deformities have the same success, I shall be still a more extensive benefactor.

‘Make my compliments to Mrs. Boswell, who is, I hope, reconciled to me; and to the young people, whom I never have offended.

‘You never told me the success of your plea against the Solicitors. I am, dear Sir, your most affectionate,

‘London, March 28, 1782.’ ‘SAM. JOHNSON.’

Notwithstanding his afflicted state of body and mind this year, the following correspondence affords a proof not only of his benevolence and conscientious readiness to relieve a good man from errour, but by his cloathing one of the sentiments in his Rambler in different language, not inferiour to that of the original, shews his extraordinary command of clear and forcible expression.

A clergyman at Bath wrote to him, that in The Morning Chronicle, a passage in The Beauties of Johnson, article Death, had been pointed out as supposed by some readers to recommend suicide, the words being, ‘To die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly;’ and respectfully suggesting to him, that such an erroneous notion of any sentence in the writings of an acknowledged friend of religion and virtue, should not pass uncontradicted.

Johnson thus answered the clergyman’s letter:–

To THE REVEREND MR. —,1071 at Bath

‘SIR, – Being now in the country in a state of recovery, as I hope, from a very oppressive disorder, I cannot neglect the acknowledgement of your Christian letter. The book called The Beauties of Johnson is the production of I know not whom: I never saw it but by casual inspection, and considered myself as utterly disengaged from its consequences. Of the passage you mention, I remember some notice in some paper; but, knowing that it must be misrepresented, I thought of it no more, nor do I know where to find it in my own books. I am accustomed