[711] Vol. ii. p.268, of Mrs. Thrale’s Collection.  BOSWELL.  The beginning of the letter is very touching:—­’I am sitting down in no cheerful solitude to write a narrative which would once have affected you with tenderness and sorrow, but which you will perhaps pass over now with the careless glance of frigid indifference.  For this diminution of regard, however, I know not whether I ought to blame you, who may have reasons which I cannot know, and I do not blame myself, who have for a great part of human life done you what good I could, and have never done you evil.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 268.  ‘I have loved you,’ he continued, ’with virtuous affection; I have honoured you with sincere esteem.  Let not all our endearments be forgotten, but let me have in this great distress your pity and your prayers.  You see I yet turn to you with my complaints as a settled and unalienable friend; do not, do not drive me from you, for I have not deserved either neglect or hatred.’ Ib. p.271.

[712] On Aug. 20 he wrote:—­’I sat to Mrs. Reynolds yesterday for my picture, perhaps the tenth time, and I sat near three hours with the patience of mortal born to bear; at last she declared it quite finished, and seems to think it fine.  I told her it was Johnson’s grimly ghost.  It is to be engraved, and I think in glided, &c., will be a good inscription.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 302.  Johnson is quoting from Mallet’s ballad of Margaret’s Ghost:—­

     ’Twas at the silent solemn hour,
      When night and morning meet;
      In glided Margaret’s grimly ghost,
      And stood at William’s feet.’

      Percy Ballads, in. 3, 16.

According to Northcote, Reynolds said of his sister’s oil-paintings, ‘they made other people laugh and him cry.’  ‘She generally,’ Northcote adds, ‘did them by stealth.’ Life of Reynolds, ii. 160.

[713] ’Nocte, inter 16 et 17 Junii, 1783.

     Summe pater, quodcunque tuum de corpore Numen
       Hoc statuat, precibus Christus adesse velit: 
     Ingenio parcas, nee sit mihi culpa rogasse,
       Qua solum potero parte placere tibi.’

     Works, i.159.

[714] According to the Gent.  Mag. 1783, p.542, Dr. Lawrence died at Canterbury on June 13 of this year, his second son died on the 15th.  But, if we may trust Munk’s Roll of the College of Physicians, ii.153, on the father’s tomb-stone, June 6 is given as the day of his death.  Mr. Croker gives June 17 as the date, and June 19 as the day of the son’s death, and is puzzled accordingly.

[715] Poor Derrick, however, though he did not himself introduce me to Dr. Johnson as he promised, had the merit of introducing me to Davies, the immediate introductor.  BOSWELL.  See ante, i.385, 391.

[716] Miss Burney, calling on him the next morning, offered to make his tea.  He had given her his own large arm-chair which was too heavy for her to move to the table. ’"Sir,” quoth she, “I am in the wrong chair.”  “It is so difficult,” cried he with quickness, “for anything to be wrong that belongs to you, that it can only be I that am in the wrong chair to keep you from the right one."’ Dr. Burney’s Memoirs, ii. 345.