children resided. She had maintained her resolution not to see him again, and returned to Bath with a heavier heart than ever. When her child died, she had written to Dr. Johnson to inform him of her trouble; but the old friends did not meet whilst she was at Streatham; and his reply to her letter beginning, "I am glad that you went to Streatham, though you could not save the dear pretty little girl," went on at once to relate how he had been dining at the opening of the exhibition, with a splendid company, and other irrelevant gossip. A few more letters passed between them; he telling her the news of the day, and praising her "placid acquiescence" in her present mode of life; she writing back in a softened, broken-hearted strain, "very sick," she says, "and a little sullen, and disposed now and then to say like King David, 'My lovers and my friends have been put away from me, and my acquaintance hid out of my sight.'" These words were probably on their way from Bath to Bolt Court when Johnson was struck dumb by paralysis on the early morning of June 17th, 1783. It was a strange impulse which made him, within a few hours of his visitation, write an elaborate and eloquent account of it to Mrs. Thrale; and this was followed up for some time by a regular diary of his disease addressed to her. Her replies amused him, and she, in her bitter solitude, accepted his lectures in a humbled spirit, and was "obliged, consoled, and delighted" by them. "You are now retired," Johnson tells her, "and have nothing to impede self-examination or self-improvement. Endeavour to reform that instability of attention which your last letter has happened to betray." Oh, soul of Quintilian! Here was stuff for your copy-book headings, with a vengeance!
Mrs. Thrale's miserable life during the year 1783, at Bath, was varied by a visit to Weymouth in the autumn, illnesses of her children in the winter, and correspondences with Dr. Johnson and Miss Burney. The last was in some sort her confidante; to her she could speak of her sufferings and their cause, and the two ladies regretted that they lived so far apart. Mrs. Thrale's daughters were now growing up about her, a bevy of proud, handsome girls, with fortunes of their own, and no little ambition of a small kind. "I have read to them," she tells Miss Burney in March 1784, "the Bible from beginning to end; the Roman and English histories; Milton, Shakespeare, Pope, and Young's works, from head to heel; Warton and Johnson's criticisms on the poets; besides a complete system of dramatic writing; and the classics—I mean English classics—they are most perfectly acquainted with. Such works of Voltaire, too, as were not dangerous, we have worked at; 'Rollin des Belles-Lettres,' and a hundred more. But my best powers are past; and I think I must look out a lady to supply my deficiency to attend them, if they should like a jaunt next summer or so; for I will not quit Bath." Here at least she had her physicians about her, who knew how ill she was, and would do their best not to let her die; but of what other friends could she say as much? Her children's utter lack of sympathy with her, and Dr. Johnson's flagrant egotism, at length exasperated the poor lady into something like vigour of speech. "You tell one of my daughters," she wrote to Johnson, "that you know not with distinctness the cause of my complaints. I believe she, who lives with me, knows it no better." The lady then scolds him roundly, and in English as eloquent as his own. "It is kind in you to quarrel no more," she says, "about expressions which were not meant to offend; but unjust to suppose I have not lately thought myself dying. Let us, however, take the Prince of Abyssinia's advice, and not add to the other evils of life the bitterness of controversy. . . . All this," she continues, relenting again, "is not written by a person in high health and happiness, but by a fellow-sufferer, who has more to endure than she can tell or you can guess; and now let us talk of the Severn salmons, which will be coming in soon: I shall send you one of the finest, and shall be glad to hear that your appetite is good." The lady did not forget her promise, and three weeks later Dr. Johnson wrote: "The Hooles, Miss Burney, and Mrs. Hull (Wesley's sister), feasted yesterday with me very cheerfully on your noble salmon. Mr. Allen could not come, but I sent him a piece, and a great tail is still left."
While Dr. Johnson was enjoying an interval of comparative good health among his London friends, Mrs. Thrale was becoming each day more ill and more unhappy; until at length her good physician, taking the matter into his own hands, informed her daughters that he must write to Signor Piozzi concerning their mother's health. Piozzi, who was living in Milan, received Dr. Dobson's welcome epistle; and in eleven days he was at her side. In the mean time Mrs. Thrale had made up her mind to be broken-hearted no more. The guardians whom Mr. Thrale had
