To Mr. Henry White[1150], a young clergyman, with whom he now formed an intimacy, so as to talk to him with great freedom, he mentioned that he could not in general accuse himself of having been an undutiful son.  ’Once, indeed, (said he,) I was disobedient; I refused to attend my father to Uttoxeter-market.  Pride was the source of that refusal, and the remembrance of it was painful.  A few years ago, I desired to atone for this fault; I went to Uttoxeter in very bad weather, and stood for a considerable time bareheaded in the rain, on the spot where my father’s stall used to stand.  In contrition I stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory[1151].’

’I told him (says Miss Seward) in one of my latest visits to him, of a wonderful learned pig, which I had seen at Nottingham; and which did all that we have observed exhibited by dogs and horses.  The subject amused him.  ’Then, (said he,) the pigs are a race unjustly calumniated. Pig has, it seems, not been wanting to man, but man to pig.  We do not allow time for his education, we kill him at a year old.’  Mr. Henry White, who was present, observed that if this instance had happened in or before Pope’s time, he would not have been justified in instancing the swine as the lowest degree of groveling instinct[1152].  Dr. Johnson seemed pleased with the observation, while the person who made it proceeded to remark, that great torture must have been employed, ere the indocility of the animal could have been subdued.  ’Certainly, (said the Doctor;) but, (turning to me,) how old is your pig?’ I told him, three years old.  ’Then, (said he,) the pig has no cause to complain; he would have been killed the first year if he had not been educated, and protracted existence is a good recompence for very considerable degrees of torture[1153].’

As Johnson had now very faint hopes of recovery, and as Mrs. Thrale was no longer devoted to him, it might have been supposed that he would naturally have chosen to remain in the comfortable house of his beloved wife’s daughter, and end his life where he began it.  But there was in him an animated and lofty spirit[1154], and however complicated diseases might depress ordinary mortals, all who saw him, beheld and acknowledged the invictum animum Catonis[1155].  Such was his intellectual ardour even at this time, that he said to one friend, ’Sir, I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance[1156];’ and to another, when talking of his illness, ’I will be conquered; I will not capitulate[1157].’  And such was his love of London, so high a relish had he of its magnificent extent, and variety of intellectual entertainment, that he languished when absent from it, his mind having become quite luxurious from the long habit of enjoying the metropolis; and, therefore, although at Lichfield, surrounded with friends, who loved and revered him, and for whom he had a very sincere affection, he still