extremely kind. I am loth to think that I grow worse; and cannot fairly prove even to my own partiality that I grow much better." "Aug. 5—I return you thanks, dear Sir, for your unwearied attention both medicinal and friendly, and hope to prove the effect of your care by living to acknowledge it." 66 Aug. 12.-Pray be so kind as to have me in your thoughts, and mention my case to others as you have opportunity. I seem to myself neither to gain nor lose strength. I have lately tried milk, but have yet found no advantage, and am afraid of it merely as a liquid. My appetite is still good, which I know is dear Dr. Heberden's criterion of the vis vitæ.-As we cannot now see each other, do not omit to write, for you cannot think with what warmth of expectation I reckon the hours of a post day." 66 Aug. 14.—I have hitherto sent you only melancholy letters: you will be glad to hear some better account. Yesterday the asthma remitted, perceptibly remitted, and I moved with more ease than I have enjoyed for many weeks. May God continue his mercy! This account I would not delay, because I am not a lover of complaints or complainers; and yet I have, since we parted, uttered nothing till now but terror and sorrow. Write to me, dear Sir." 66 'Aug. 16.-Better, I hope, and better. My respiration gets more and more ease and liberty. I went to church yesterday, after a very liberal dinner, without any inconvenience; it is indeed no long walk, but I never walked it without difficulty, since I came, before. ****** the intention was only to overpower the seeming vis inertia of the pectoral and pulmonary muscles. I am favoured with a degree of ease that very much delights me, and do not despair of another race up the stairs of the Academy.-If I were, however, of a humour to see, or to show, the state of my body, on the dark side, I might say, 'Quid te exempta juvat spinis de pluribus una? ' The nights are still sleepless, and the water rises, though it does not rise very fast. Let us, however, rejoice in all the good that we have. The remission of one disease will enable nature to combat the rest.—The squills I have not neglected; for I have taken more than a hundred drops a day, and one day took two hundred and fifty, which, according to the popular equivalent of I thank you, a drop to a grain, is more than half an ounce. dear Sir, for your attention in ordering the medicines; your attention to me has never failed. If the virtue of medicines could be enforced by the benevolence of the prescriber, how soon should I be well!" 66 August 19.-The relaxation of the asthma still continues, yet I do not trust it wholly to itself, but soothe it now and then with an opiate. I not only perform the act of respiration with less labour, but I can walk with fewer intervals of rest, and with greater freedom of motion. I never thought well of Dr. James's compounded medicines; his ingredients appear to me sometimes inefficacious and trifling, and sometimes heterogeneous and destructive of each other. This prescription exhibits a composition of about three hundred and thirty grains, in which there are four grains of emetic tartar, and six drops [of] thebaic tincture. He that writes thus surely, writes for show. The basis of his medicine is the gum ammoniacum, which dear Dr. Lawrence used to give, but of which I never saw any effect. We will, if you please, let this medicine alone. The squills have every suffrage, and in the squills we will rest for the present." 66 Aug. 21.—The kindness which you show by having me in your thoughts upon all occasions will, I hope, always fill my heart with gratitude. Be pleased to return my thanks to Sir George Baker, for the consideration which he has bestowed upon me. Is this the balloon that has been so long expected, this balloon to which I subscribed, but without payment? It is pity that philosophers have been disappointed, and shame that they have been cheated; but I know not well how to prevent either. Of this experiment I have read nothing: where was it exhibited? and who was the man that ran away with so much money? Continue, dear Sir, to write often, and more at a time; for none of your prescriptions operate to their proper uses more certainly than your letters operate as cordials." The eminent physician, who was created a Baronet in 1776, and died June 1809, ætat. 88.--Croker. 2 Does Dr. Johnson here allude to the unsuccessful attempt made in 1784, by De Moret, who was determined to anticipate Lunardi in his first experiment in England? "Moret attempted to inflate his balloon with rarefied air, but by some accident in the process it sunk upon the fire; and the populace, who regarded the whole as an imposture, rushing in, completely destroyed the machine."-Brayley's Londin vol. ii., p. 162, note.-Markland. August 26.-I suffered you to escape last post without a letter, but you are not to expect such indulgence very often; for I write not so much because I have any thing to say, as because I hope for an answer; and the vacancy of my life here makes a letter of great value. I have here little company and little amusement; and, thus abandoned to the contemplation of my own miseries, I am something gloomy and depressed: this too I resist as I can, and find opium, I think, useful; but I seldom take more than one grain. Is not this strange weather? Winter absorbed the spring, and now autumn is come before we have had summer. But let not our kindness for each other imitate the inconstancy of the seasons." "Sept. 2.—Mr. Windham has been here to see me;1 he came, I think, forty miles out of his way, and staid about a day and a half; perhaps I make the time shorter than it was. Such conversation I shall not have again till I come back to the regions of literature; and there Windham is inter stellas2 Luna minores.” He then mentions the effects of certain medicines, as taken; that "Nature is recovering its original powers, and the functions returning to their proper state. God continue his mercies, and grant me to use them rightly!" "Sept. 9. Do you know the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire? And have you ever seen Chatsworth? I was at Chatsworth on Monday: I had seen it before, but never when its owners were at home; I was very kindly received, and honestly pressed to stay; but I told them that a sick man is not a fit inmate of a great house. But I hope to go again some time." 66 Sept. 11.-I think nothing grows worse, but all rather better, except sleep, and that of late has been at its old pranks. Last evening, I felt what I had not known for a long time, an inclination to walk for amusement; I took a short walk, and came back again neither breathless nor fatigued. This has been a gloomy, frigid, ungenial summer; but of late it seems to mend; I hear the heat sometimes mentioned, but I do not feel it: 1 In Windham's Diary this visit is recorded: "Sept. 1. Left Ashbourne at half-past one, having gone with Dr. Johnson in the morning to prayers, but regretted upon reflection that I had not stayed another day."-Diary, p. 20.-Editor. 2 Hor. Carm. i. 12, 47. It is remarkable that so good a Latin scholar as Johnson should have been so inattentive to the metre, as by mistake to have written stellas instead of ignes. ་ Præterea minimus gelido jam in corpore sanguis I hope, however, with good help, to find means of supporting a 66 2 Lichfield, Sept. 29.—On one day I had three letters about the air-balloon: yours was far the best, and has enabled me to impart to my friends in the country an idea of this species of amusement. In amusement, mere amusement, I am afraid it must end, for I do not find that its course can be directed so as that it should serve any purposes of communication; and it can give no new intelligence of the state of the air at different heights, till they have ascended above the height of mountains, which they seem never likely to do. I came hither on the 27th. How 2 Lunardi had ascended from the Artillery Ground on the 15th of this month; and as it was the first ascent in a balloon which had been witnessed in England, it was not surprising that very general interest was excited by the spectacle, and that so many allusions should be made to it by Johnson and his correspondents. The late Lord Tenterden, whilst a student at Oxford, obtained a prize in this year, for his Latin verses entitled Globus Aërostaticus.-Markland. 66 Sept. 29. About nine came to Brookes', where I heard that the balloon had been burnt about four o'clock."-Windham's Diary, p. 24.Editor. long I shall stay, I have not determined. My dropsy is gone, and my asthma is much remitted, but I have felt myself a little declining these two days, or at least to-day; but such vicissitudes must be expected. One day may be worse than another; but this last month is far better than the former; if the next should be as much better than this, I shall run about the town on my own legs." "Oct. 6.-The fate of the balloon I do not much lament: to make new balloons is to repeat the jest again. We now know a method of mounting into the air, and I think, are not likely to know more. The vehicles can serve no use till we can guide them; and they can gratify no curiosity till we mount with them to greater heights than we can reach without; till we rise above the tops of the highest mountains, which we have yet not done. We know the state of the air in all its regions, to the top of Teneriffe, and therefore learn nothing from those who navigate a balloon below the clouds. The first experiment, however, was bold, and deserved applause and reward: but since it has been performed, and its event is known, I had rather now find a medicine that can ease an asthma." "Oct. 25.-You write to me with a zeal that animates and a tenderness that melts me. I am not afraid either of a journey to London, or a residence in it. I came down with little fatigue, and am now not weaker. In the smoky atmosphere I was delivered from the dropsy, which I consider as the original and radical disease. The town is my element: there are my friends, there are my books, to which I have not yet bid farewell, and there are my amusements. Sir Joshua told me long ago, that my vocation was to public life; and I hope still to keep my station, till God shall bid me Go in peace." 1 His 1 love of London continually appears. In a letter from him to Mrs. Smart, wife of his friend the poet, which is published in a wellwritten life of him, prefixed to an edition of his poems, in 1791, there is the following sentence: "To one that has passed so many years in the pleasures and opulence of London, there are few places that can give much deligldit." Once upolin reading that line in the curious epitaph quoted in “The Spectator,"- n "Born in New England, did in London die,”— he laughed. and said, "I do not wonder at this. It would have been strange if, born in London, he had died in New England." |