Here Thomas Sapper lies interred.  Ah why! 
     Born in New-England, did in London die.’

[1112] St. Mark, v. 34.

[1113] There is no record of this in the Gent.  Mag.  Among the 149 persons who that summer had been sentenced to death (ante, p. 328) who would notice these two?

[1114] See ante, p. 356, note 1

[1115] Johnson wrote for him a Dedication of his Tasso in 1763. Ante, i. 383.

[1116] There was no information for which Dr. Johnson was less grateful that than for that which concerned the weather.  It was in allusion to his impatience with those who were reduced to keep conversation alive by observations on the weather, that he applied the old proverb to himself.  If any one of his intimate acquaintance told him it was hot or cold, wet or dry, windy or calm, he would stop them, by saying, ’Poh! poh! you are telling us that of which none but men in a mine or a dungeon can be ignorant.  Let us bear with patience, or enjoy in quiet, elementary changes, whether for the better or the worse, as they are never secrets.’  BURNEY.  In The Idler, No.  II, Johnson shews that ’an Englishman’s notice of the weather is the natural consequence of changeable skies and uncertain seasons...  In our island every man goes to sleep unable to guess whether he shall behold in the morning a bright or cloudy atmosphere, whether his rest shall be lulled by a shower, or broken by a tempest.  We therefore rejoice mutually at good weather, as at an escape from something that we feared; and mutually complain of bad, as of the loss of something that we hoped.’  See ante, i. 332, and iv. 353.

[1117] His Account of the Musical Performances in Commemoration of Handel.  See ante, p. 283.

[1118] The celebrated Miss Fanny Burney.  BOSWELL.

[1119] Dr. Burney’s letter must have been franked; otherwise there would have been no frugality, for each enclosure was charged as a separate letter.

[1120] He does not know, that is to say, what people of his acquaintance were in town, privileged to receive letters post free; such as members of either House of Parliament.

[1121] Consolation is clearly a blunder, Malone’s conjecture mortification seems absurd.

[1122] See ante, iii. 48, and iv. 177.

[1123] Windham visited him at Ashbourne in the end of August, after the former of these letters was written.  See ante, p. 356.

[1124] This may refer, as Mr. Croker says, to Hamilton’s generous offer, mentioned ante, p. 244.  Yet Johnson, with his accurate mind, was not likely to assign to the spring an event of the previous November.

[1125] Johnson refers to Pope’s lines on Walpole:—­

’Seen him I have but in his happier hour
Of social pleasure, ill-exchanged for power.’

Satires.  Epilogue, i. 29.