in spite of their faults, he was strongly attached by habit,
dropped off one by one; and, in the silence of his home,
he regretted even the noise of their scolding-matches.
The kind and generous Thrale was no more; and it
would have been well if his wife had been laid beside 5
him. But she survived to be the laughing-stock of those
who had envied her, and to draw from the eyes of the
old man who had loved her beyond anything in the world
tears far more bitter than he would have shed over her
grave. With some estimable and many agreeable quali- 1c
ties, she was not made to be independent. The control
of a mind more steadfast than her own was necessary to
her respectability. While she was restrained by her
husband, a man of sense and firmness, indulgent to her
taste in trifles, but always the undisputed master of his 15
house, her worst offences had been impertinent jokes,
white lies, and short fits of pettishness ending in sunny
good humour. But he was gone; and she was left an
opulent widow of forty, with strong sensibility, volatile
fancy, and slender judgment. She soon fell in love with 20
a music-master from Brescia, in whom nobody but
herself could discover anything to admire. Her pride,
and perhaps some better feelings, struggled hard against
this degrading passion. But the struggle irritated her
nerves, soured her temper, and at length endangered her 25
health. Conscious that her choice was one which John-
son could not approve, she became desirous to
escape from his inspection. Her manner toward
him changed. She was sometimes cold and some-
times petulant. She did not conceal her joy when he 30
left Streatham; she never pressed him to return; and,

Rupture

with Mrs.

Thrale.

о

if he came unbidden, she received him in a manner which convinced him that he was no longer a welcome guest. He took the very intelligible hints which she gave. He read, for the last time, a chapter of the Greek 5 Testament in the library which had been formed by himself. In a solemn and tender prayer he commended the house and its inmates to the Divine protection, and, with emotions which choked his voice and convulsed his powerful frame, left forever that beloved home for the 10 gloomy and desolate house behind Fleet Street, where the few and evil days which still remained to him were to run out. Here, in June 1783, he had a paralytic stroke, from which, however, he recovered, and which does not appear to have at all impaired his intellectual 15 faculties. But other maladies came thick upon him. His asthma tormented him day and night. Dropsical symptoms made their appearance. While sinking under a complication of diseases, he heard that the woman whose friendship had been the chief happiness of sixteen 20 years of his life had married an Italian fiddler; that all London was crying shame upon her; and that the newspapers and magazines were filled with allusions to the Ephesian matron, and the two pictures in Hamlet. He vehemently said that he would try to forget her 25 existence. He never uttered her name. Every memorial of her which met his eye he flung into the fire. She meanwhile fled from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen to a land where she was unknown, hastened across Mount Cenis, and 30 learned, while passing a merry Christmas of concerts

and lemonade parties at Milan, that the great man

Final illness,

with whose name hers is inseparably associated had ceased to exist.1

51. He had, in spite of much mental and much bodily affliction, clung vehemently to life. The feeling described in that fine but gloomy paper which closes 5 the series of his Idlers seemed to grow stronger in him as his last hour drew near.2 He fancied that he should be able to draw his breath more easily in a southern climate, and would probably have set out for Rome and Naples, but for his fear of the expense of the 10 journey. That expense, indeed, he had the means of defraying; for he had laid up about two thousand pounds, the fruit of labours which had made the fortune of several publishers. But he was unwilling to break in upon this hoard; and he seems to have wished even to 15 keep its existence a secret. Some of his friends hoped that the Government might be induced to increase his pension to six hundred pounds a year: but this hope was disappointed; and he resolved to stand one English winter more. That winter was his last. His legs grew 20 weaker; his breath grew shorter; the fatal water gathered fast, in spite of incisions which he, courageous against pain, but timid against death, urged his surgeons to make deeper and deeper. Though the tender care which had mitigated his sufferings during months of sick-25 ness at Streatham was withdrawn, he was not left desolate. The ablest physicians and surgeons attended him, and refused to accept fees from him. Burke parted from him with deep emotion. Windham sate much in the sick-room, arranged the pillows, and sent his own servant 30 1 Note, p. 68. 2 Note, p. 69.