Hawkins's Life of Johnson.
��/-The visits of idle, and some of them very worthless persons, ^ere never unwelcome to Johnson ; and though they interrupted feim in his studies and meditations, yet, as they gave him oppor tunities of discourse, and furnished him with intelligence, he strove K^-ther to protract than shorten or discountenance them ; and, when abroad, such was the laxity of his mind, that he consented to the doing of many things, otherwise indifferent, for the avowed reason that they would drive on time I . (Page 565.)
In his return to London, he stopped at Lichfield, and from thence wrote to me several letters 2 , that served but to prepare me for meeting him in a worse state of health than I had ever seen him in. The concluding paragraph of the last of them is as follows : ' I am relapsing into the dropsy very fast, and shall make such haste to town that it will be useless to write to me ; but when I come, let me have the benefit of your advice, and the consolation of your company.' [Dated Nov. 7, 1784.] After about a fortnight's stay there, he took his leave of that city, and of Mrs. Porter, whom he never afterwards saw, and arrived in town on the sixteenth day of November 3 .
After the declaration he had made of his intention to provide for his servant Frank, and before his going into the country, I had frequently pressed him to make a will, and had gone so far as to make a draft of one, with blanks for the names of the executors and residuary legatee, and directing in what manner it was to be executed and attested ; but he was exceedingly averse to this business ; and, while he was in Derbyshire, I repeated my solicitations, for this purpose, by letters. When he arrived in town he had done nothing in it 4 , and, to what I formerly said,
��1 'When I, in a low-spirited fit, was talking to him with indifference of the pursuits which generally en gage us in a course of action, and in quiring a reason for taking so much trouble ; " Sir." said he, in an ani mated tone, "it is driving on the system of life." ' Life, iv. 112.
2 None of these have been pub lished.
3 Life, iv. 377.
��4 Five years earlier Johnson had been urging Thrale to make his will. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale : ' Some days before our last separation Mr. Thrale and I had one evening an earnest discourse about the business with Mr. Scrase [a solicitor]. . . . Do not let those fears prevail which you know to be unreasonable ; a will brings the end of life no nearer.' Letters, ii. 115.
I now
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