��Essay on
��By the death of Mrs. Williams he was left in a state of desti tution, with nobody but Frank, his black servant, to sooth his anxious moments 1 . In November 1783, he was swelled from head to foot with a dropsy 2 . Dr. Brocklesby, with that benevo lence with which he always assists his friends, paid his visits with assiduity. The medicines prescribed were so efficacious, that in a few days, Johnson, while he was offering up his prayers, was suddenly obliged to rise, and, in the course of the day, dis charged twenty pints of water 3 .
Johnson, being eased of his dropsy, began to entertain hopes that the vigour of his constitution was not entirely broken. For the sake of conversing with his friends, he established a conversa tion club, to meet on every Wednesday evening ; and, to serve a man whom he had known in Mr. Thrale's household for many years, the place was fixed at his house in Essex street near the Temple 4 . To answer the malignant remarks of Sir John Hawkins on this subject, were a wretched waste of time. Pro fessing to be Johnson's friend, that biographer has raised more objections to his character, than all the enemies of that excellent man s . Sir John had a root of bitterness that put rancours in the
��1 ' Last month died Mrs. Williams, who had been to me for thirty years in the place of a sister ; her know ledge was great and her conversa tion pleasing. I now live in cheer less solitude.' Letters, ii. 348.
2 Life, iv. 255.
3 It was not till February 19 that Johnson had this relief. Letters, ii. 384 ; Life, iv. 261, 271 ; Hawkins, p. 565.
4 Murphy was a member of the Essex Head Club ; yet his account is inaccurate. 'We meet thrice a week,' wrote Johnson. Life, iv. 254. In the Rules it is laid down that ' the meetings shall be on the Mon day, Thursday, and Saturday of every week ; but in the week before Easter there shall be no meeting.' Ib. n. 5.
��5 Hawkins (p. 567) thus writes of the formation of the Club : ' I was not made privy to this his intention, but all circumstances con sidered, it was no matter of surprise to me when I heard that the great Dr. Johnson had, in the month of December 1783, formed a sixpenny club at an ale-house in Essex-street, and that though some of the persons thereof were persons of note, strangers, under restrictions, for three pence each night might three nights in a week hear him talk and partake of his conversation.'
Miss Hawkins (Memoirs, i. 103) says : ' Boswell was well justified in his resentment of my father's desig nation of this club as a sixpenny club, meeting at an ale-house. . . . Honestly speaking, I daresay my vessel
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