��dear Mur x , the story is black enough now ; and it was a very happy day for me that brought you first to my house, and a very happy mistake about the Ramblers.'
Dr. Johnson was always exceeding fond of chemistry ; and we made up a sort of laboratory at Streatham one summer, and diverted ourselves with drawing essences and colouring liquors 2 . But the danger Mr. Thrale found his friend in one day when I was driven to London, and he had got the children and servants round him to see some experiments performed, put an end to all our entertainment ; so well was the master of the house per suaded, that his short sight would have been his destruction in a moment, by bringing him close to a fierce and violent flame. Indeed it was a perpetual miracle that he did not set himself on fire reading a-bed, as was his constant custom, when exceedingly unable even to keep clear of mischief with our best help ; and accordingly the fore-top of all his wigs were [sic] burned by the candle down to the very net-work. Mr. Thrale's valet-de-chambre, for that reason, kept one always in his own hands, with which he met him at the parlour-door when the bell had called him down to dinner, and as he went up stairs to
study of alchymy.' Gibbon's Decline sophy became a general study ; and
and Fall, ed. 1802, ii. 138. the new doctrine of electricity grew
1 ' Johnson had a way of contract- into fashion . . . The art of chemistry ing the names of his friends, as was perfectly understood and as- Beauclerk, Beau ; Boswell, Bozzy ; siduously applied to the purposes of Langton, Lanky : Murphy, Mur ; sophistication.' History of England, Sheridan, Sherry.' Life, ii. 258. ed. 1800, v. 375. (Johnson defines
2 He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Sophistication ; adulteration?)
July 24, 1771: ' Be pleased to make Watson, at his chemical lectures
my compliments to Mr. Thrale, and at Cambridge (1766-9), had very
desire that his builders will leave crowded audiences ' of persons of all
about a hundred loose bricks. I can ages and degrees in the University.'
at present think of no better place Life of Bishop Watson, i. 46, 53.
for chymistry in fair weather than Gibbon, after the publication of
the pump-side in the kitchen-garden.' the first volume of his History, at-
Letters, i. 183. For his love of tended a course of anatomy and
chemistry see Life, i. 140, 436; iii. some lessons on chemistry. 'The
398 ; iv. 237. He defines chymist as anatomist and chemist,' he says,
a philosopher by fire. 'may sometimes track me in their
Smollett, writing of the reign of own snow.' Misc. Works, i. 229. George II, says :' Natural philo-
x a sleep
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