for him, and send me some physician, Sir R. Jebb or Pepys, or if none else could be found, my old accoucheur, Doctor Bromfield of Gerard Street. 'Twas he that came; and, convincing me it was an apoplectic seizure, acted accordingly, while the silly ladies went home quite contented I believe: only Mrs. Nesbitt said she thought he was delirious; and from her companion I learned that he had dined at their house, had seen the will opened, and had dropped as if lifeless from the dinner-table; when, instead of calling help, they called their carriage, and brought him five or six miles out of town in that condition. Would it not much enrage one? From this dreadful situation medical art relieved Mr. Thrale, but the natural disposition to conviviality degenerated into a preternatural desire for food, like Erisicthon of old

"Cibus omnis in illo

Causa cibi est; semperque locus inanis edendo."

It was a distressing moment, and the distress increasing perpetually, nor could any one persuade our patient to believe, or at least to acknowledge, he ever had been ill. With a person, the very wretched wreck of what it had been, no one could keep him at home. Dinners and company engrossed all his thoughts, and dear Dr. Johnson encouraged him in them, that he might not appear wise, or predicting his friend's certainly accelerated dissolution.

Death of the baby boy I carried in my bosom, was the natural consequence of the scene described here;

but I continued to carry him till a quarrel among the clerks, which I was called to pacify, made a complete finish of the child, and nearly of me. The men were reconciled though, and my danger accelerated their reconcilement.

DEATH OF THRALE.

"It was by bleeding till he fainted that his life was saved."-Johnson, Aug. 24, 1780; Letters, vol. ii. p. 185.

Here is another allusion to that famous bleeding which certainly in Southwark did save the life of Mr. Thrale, and by its immediate effects ruined my nerves for ever.

Sir Richard however said: "We have paid his heavy debt this time, but he must eat prudently in future." No one however could control his appetite, which Sir Lucas Pepys, who was at Brighthelmstone, observing, commanded us to town, and took a house not 100 yards from his own for us, in Grosvenor Square, and I went every day to the Borough, whence Lancaster, a favourite clerk third in command, was run away with 1850l. Thither poor Dr. Delap followed me, begging a prologue to his new play, and I remember composing it in the coach, as I was driving up and down after Lancaster: but my business in Southwark was of far severer import.

Some fellow had incited our master to begin a new and expensive building to the amount of 20,000l., after the progress of which he was ever inquisitive, and kept

to me,

the plan of it in his bedchamber. So little did Dr. Johnson even then comprehend the strict awe I stood in of my first husband, that I well recollect his saying "Madam! You should tear that foolish paper down: why 'tis like leaving a wench's loveletter in the apartments of a man whom you would wish to cure of his amorous passion." God knows I durst as well encounter death as disturb Mr. Thrale's loveletters or his building plans. The next grand agony was seeing him send out cards of invitation to a concert and supper on the 5th of April. He had himself charged Piozzi, who was the first to tell me, with care of the musical part of our entertainment, and had himself engaged the Parsees, a set of Orientals, who were shown at all the gay houses, -the lions of the day. I could but call my coadjutors, Jebb and Pepys; who tried to counteract this frolic, but in vain. They were obliged to compromise the matter by making him promise to leave town for Streatham immediately after the 5th. "Leave London! lose my Ranelagh season!" exclaimed their patient. "Why Sir, we wished you to be here, that our attendance might be more regular, and less expensive: but since we find you thus unmanageable, you are safest at a distance." Now, Johnson first began to see, or say he saw the danger, but now his lectures upon temperance came all too late. Poor Mr. Thrale answered him only by inquiring when lamprey season would come in? requesting Sir Philip, who was dining with us, to write his brother, the Prebendary of Worcester, a letter, begging from him the first fish of that kind the Severn should produce. I

winked at Sir Philip, but he, following us women half up stairs, said: "I understand you, Madam, but must disobey. A friend I have known thirty-six years shall not ask a favour of me in his last stage of life and be refused. What difference can it make?" Tears stood

In

in his eyes, and my own prevented all answer. effect, that day was Mr. Thrale's last! I saw him in Sir Richard's arms at midnight. Pepys came at ten, and never left the house till early light showed me the way to Streatham: and from thence, hoping still less disturbance, to Brighthelmstone: where we had a dwelling house of our own, and whither you will see the letters all addressed.

This was thirty-four or thirty-five years ago, yet did I never completely recover my strength of body or of mind again. I am sure I never did! The shocks of 1780 and 1781 are not yet either recovered or forgotten by poor H. L. P.