��Prayers and Meditations.
��I hope to-morrow to finish Laurence, and to write to Mrs. Aston, and to Lucy.
19. I rose late. I was visited by Mrs. Thrale, Mr. Cotton \ and Mr. Crofts 2 . I took Laurence's paper in hand, but was chill, having fasted yesterday, I was hungry and dined freely, then slept a little, and drank tea, then took candles and wrote to Aston and Lucy 3 , then went on with Laurence of which little remains. I prayed with Francis.
Mens sedatior, laus DEO.
To-morrow Shaw 4 comes, I think to finish Laurence, and write to Langton.
Poor Laurence has almost lost the sense of hearing, and I have lost the conversation of a learned, intelligent, and com municative companion, and a friend whom long familiarity has much endeared. Laurence is one of the best men whom I have known.
Nostrum omnium miserere, Deus 5 .
20. Shaw came ; I finished reading Laurence. Steevens came. I dined liberally. Wrote a long letter to Langton 6 , and designed to read but was hindered by Strahan 7 . The ministry is dis solved. I prayed with Fr. and gave thanks 8 .
��1 Mrs. Thrale had cousins of that name. Life, v. 435, n. 2 ; Letters, ii. 394, n.
2 It was not the Rev. Thomas Crofts, the owner of a famous library, for he had died in 1781. Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, viii. 482. See Letters, ii. 294, where his name is wrongly given as Croft. Perhaps Johnson's visitor was the Rev. Her bert Croft who had written for him the Life of Young. Life, iv. 58.
3 The letter to Mrs. Aston has never been printed; for the letter to Miss Porter, see Life, iv. 142.
4 William Shaw, the Gaelic scholar. Life, iii. 106 ; iv. 252.
5 This passage about Dr. Lawrence is quoted in the Life, iv. 143.
6 Life, iv. 145.
��7 William Strahan, the printer, M.P. for Malmesbury.
8 Quoted by Boswell under date of Jan. 20. Life, iv. 139. On the after noon of March 20 Lord North an nounced in the House of Commons ' that his Majesty's Ministers were no more.' ParL Hist. xxii. 125. For Johnson's contempt of this ministry, he wrote : ' The men are got in whom I have endeavoured to keep out, but I hope they will do better than their predecessors ; it will not be easy to do worse.' Letters, ii. 248.
Fifty-one years later Macaulay de scribed ' a splendid rout at Lord Grey's,' who was then Prime Minister. ( I mean,' he wrote, ' only to tell you one circumstance which struck and To-morrow
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