124 Extracts from
��His complaints still increasing, I continued pressing him to make a will, but he still procrastinated that business. On the twenty-seventh of November, in the morning, I went to his house, with a purpose still farther to urge him not to give occa sion, by dying intestate, for litigation among his relations ; but finding that he was gone to pass the day with the Reverend Mr. Strahan, at Islington, I followed him thither, and found there our old friend Mr. Ryland, and Mr. Hoole *. Upon my sitting down, he said, that the prospect of the change he was about to undergo, and the thought of meeting his Saviour, troubled him, but that he had hope that he would not reject him. I then began to discourse with him about his will, and the provision for Frank, till he grew angry 2 . He told me, that he had signed and sealed the paper I left him ; but that, said I, had blanks in it, which, as it seems, you have not filled up with the names of the
executors. * You should have filled them up yourself,' answered
he. 1 replied, that such an act would have looked as if I meant
to prevent his choice of a fitter person. ' Sir,' said he, * these
minor virtues are not to be exercised in matters of such import ance as this.' At length, he said, that on his return home,
he would send for a clerk, and dictate a will to him.- You will then, said I, be inops consilii ; rather do it now. With Mr. Strahan's permission, I will be his guest at dinner ; and, if Mr. Hoole will please to hold the pen, I will, in a few words,
make such a disposition of your estate as you shall direct. To
this he assented ; but such a paroxysm of the asthma seized him, as prevented our going on. As the fire burned up, he found himself relieved, and grew chearful. ' The fit/ said he, ' was very sharp ; but I am now easy.' After I had dictated a few lines, I told him, that he being a man of eminence for learning and parts, it would afford an illustrious example, and well become him, to make such an explicit declaration of his belief, as might obviate all suspicions that he was any other than a Christian 3 .
1 Post in Mr. Hoole's Anecdotes. Johnson (pp. 599, 605) as ' the effects
2 He grew angry, no doubt, with of ill-directed benevolence,' and as Hawkins for protesting against the ' ostentatious bounty/
annuity for Frank, which that ' brutal 3 ' A few years ago it was the uni- fellow ' described in his Life of form practice to begin wills with the
He
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