Be so kind as to continue your attention to Mrs. Williams; it is great consolation to the well, and still greater to the sick, that they find themselves not neglected; and I know that you will be desirous of giving comfort even where you have no great hope of giving help.

Since I wrote the former part of the letter, I find that by the course of the post I cannot send it before the thirty-first.

I am, &c.  SAM.  JOHNSON.’

While he was here he had a letter from Dr. Brocklesby, acquainting him of the death of Mrs. Williams, which affected him a good deal[725].  Though for several years her temper had not been complacent, she had valuable qualities, and her departure left a blank in his house[726].  Upon this occasion he, according to his habitual course of piety, composed a prayer[727].

I shall here insert a few particulars concerning him, with which I have been favoured by one of his friends[728].

’He had once conceived the design of writing the Life of Oliver Cromwell[729], saying, that he thought it must be highly curious to trace his extraordinary rise to the supreme power, from so obscure a beginning.  He at length laid aside his scheme, on discovering that all that can be told of him is already in print; and that it is impracticable to procure any authentick information in addition to what the world is already possessed of[730].’

’He had likewise projected, but at what part of his life is not known, a work to shew how small a quantity of REAL FICTION there is in the world; and that the same images, with very little variation, have served all the authours who have ever written[731].’

’His thoughts in the latter part of his life were frequently employed on his deceased friends.  He often muttered these, or such like sentences:  “Poor man! and then he died."’

’Speaking of a certain literary friend, “He is a very pompous puzzling fellow, (said he); he lent me a letter once that somebody had written to him, no matter what it was about; but he wanted to have the letter back, and expressed a mighty value for it; he hoped it was to be met with again, he would not lose it for a thousand pounds.  I layed my hand upon it soon afterwards, and gave it him.  I believe I said, I was very glad to have met with it.  O, then he did not know that it signified any thing.  So you see, when the letter was lost it was worth a thousand pounds, and when it was found it was not worth a farthing."’

’The style and character of his conversation is pretty generally known; it was certainly conducted in conformity with a precept of Lord Bacon, but it is not clear, I apprehend, that this conformity was either perceived or intended by Johnson.  The precept alluded to is as follows:  “In all kinds of speech, either pleasant, grave, severe, or ordinary, it is convenient to speak leisurely, and rather drawingly than hastily:  because hasty speech confounds the memory, and oftentimes, besides