’To MRS. LUCY PORTER, IN LICHFIELD.

DEAR MADAM, The account which you give of your health is but melancholy.  May it please GOD to restore you.  My disease affected my speech, and still continues, in some degree, to obstruct my utterance; my voice is distinct enough for a while; but the organs being still weak are quickly weary:  but in other respects I am, I think, rather better than I have lately been; and can let you know my state without the help of any other hand.

In the opinion of my friends, and in my own, I am gradually mending.  The Physicians consider me as cured; and I had leave, four days ago, to wash the cantharides from my head.  Last Tuesday I dined at THE CLUB.

I am going next week into Kent, and purpose to change the air frequently this summer; whether I shall wander so far as Staffordshire I cannot tell.  I should be glad to come.  Return my thanks to Mrs. Cobb, and Mr. Pearson, and all that have shewn attention to me.

Let us, my dear, pray for one another, and consider our sufferings as notices mercifully given us to prepare ourselves for another state.

I live now but in a melancholy way.  My old friend Mr. Levett is dead, who lived with me in the house, and was useful and companionable; Mrs. Desmoulins is gone away[719]; and Mrs. Williams is so much decayed, that she can add little to another’s gratifications.  The world passes away, and we are passing with it; but there is, doubtless, another world, which will endure for ever.  Let us all fit ourselves for it.

I am, &c., SAM.  JOHNSON.  London, July 5, 1783.’

Such was the general vigour of his constitution, that he recovered from this alarming and severe attack with wonderful quickness; so that in July he was able to make a visit to Mr. Langton at Rochester[720], where he passed about a fortnight, and made little excursions as easily as at any time of his life[721].  In August he went as far as the neighbourhood of Salisbury, to Heale[722], the seat of William Bowles, Esq[723]., a gentleman whom I have heard him praise for exemplary religious order in his family.  In his diary I find a short but honourable mention of this visit:  ’August 28, I came to Heale without fatigue. 30.  I am entertained quite to my mind.’

’To DR. BROCKLESBY.  Heale, near Salisbury, Aug. 29, 1783.

DEAR SIR, Without appearing to want a just sense of your kind attention, I cannot omit to give an account of the day which seemed to appear in some sort perilous.  I rose at five and went out at six, and having reached Salisbury about nine[724], went forward a few miles in my friend’s chariot.  I was no more wearied with the journey, though it was a high-hung, rough coach, than I should have been forty years ago.  We shall now see what air will do.  The country is all a plain; and the house in which I am, so far as I can judge from my window, for I write before I have left my chamber, is sufficiently pleasant.