’Of my life, from the time we parted, the history is mournful.  The spring of last year deprived me of Thrale, a man whose eye for fifteen years had scarcely been turned upon me but with respect or tenderness[455]; for such another friend, the general course of human things will not suffer man to hope.  I passed the summer at Streatham, but there was no Thrale; and having idled away the summer with a weakly body and neglected mind, I made a journey to Staffordshire on the edge of winter.  The season was dreary, I was sickly, and found the friends sickly whom I went to see.  After a sorrowful sojourn, I returned to a habitation possessed for the present by two sick women, where my dear old friend, Mr. Levett, to whom as he used to tell me, I owe your acquaintance[456], died a few weeks ago, suddenly in his bed; there passed not, I believe, a minute between health and death.  At night, as at Mrs. Thrale’s I was musing in my chamber, I thought with uncommon earnestness, that however I might alter my mode of life, or whithersoever I might remove[457], I would endeavour to retain Levett about me; in the morning my servant brought me word that Levett was called to another state, a state for which, I think, he was not unprepared, for he was very useful to the poor.  How much soever I valued him, I now wish that I had valued him more[458].

’I have myself been ill more than eight weeks of a disorder, from which at the expence of about fifty ounces of blood, I hope I am now recovering.

’You, dear Sir, have, I hope, a more cheerful scene; you see George fond of his book, and the pretty misses airy and lively, with my own little Jenny[459] equal to the best[460]:  and in whatever can contribute to your quiet or pleasure, you have Lady Rothes ready to concur.  May whatever you enjoy of good be encreased, and whatever you suffer of evil be diminished.

I am, dear Sir,
Your humble servant,
‘SAM.  JOHNSON.’

’Bolt-court, Fleet-street,
  March 20, 1782.’

’To MR. HECTOR, IN BIRMINGHAM[461].

’DEAR SIR,

’I hope I do not very grossly flatter myself to imagine that you and dear Mrs. Careless[462] will be glad to hear some account of me.  I performed the journey to London with very little inconvenience, and came safe to my habitation, where I found nothing but ill health, and, of consequence, very little cheerfulness.  I then went to visit a little way into the country, where I got a complaint by a cold which has hung eight weeks upon me, and from which I am, at the expence of fifty ounces of blood, not yet free.  I am afraid I must once more owe my recovery to warm weather, which seems to make no advances towards us.

’Such is my health, which will, I hope, soon grow better.  In other respects I have no reason to complain.  I know not that I have written any thing more generally commended than the Lives of the Poets; and have found the world willing enough to caress me, if my health had invited me to be in much company; but this season I have been almost wholly employed in nursing myself.