’When summer comes I hope to see you again, and will not put off my visit to the end of the year.  I have lived so long in London, that I did not remember the difference of seasons.

’Your health, when I saw you, was much improved.  You will be prudent enough not to put it in danger.  I hope, when we meet again, we shall all congratulate each other upon fair prospects of longer life; though what are the pleasures of the longest life, when placed in comparison with a happy death?

’I am, dear Sir,

’Yours most affectionately,

‘SAM.  JOHNSON.’

‘London, March 21, 1782.’

To THE SAME.

[Without a date, but supposed to be about this time.][463]

’DEAR SIR,

’That you and dear Mrs. Careless should have care or curiosity about my health, gives me that pleasure which every man feels from finding himself not forgotten.  In age we feel again that love of our native place and our early friends, which in the bustle or amusements of middle life were overborne and suspended.  You and I should now naturally cling to one another:  we have outlived most of those who could pretend to rival us in each other’s kindness.  In our walk through life we have dropped our companions, and are now to pick up such as chance may offer us, or to travel on alone[464].  You, indeed, have a sister, with whom you can divide the day:  I have no natural friend left; but Providence has been pleased to preserve me from neglect; I have not wanted such alleviations of life as friendship could supply.  My health has been, from my twentieth year, such as has seldom afforded me a single day of ease[465]; but it is at least not worse:  and I sometimes make myself believe that it is better.  My disorders are, however, still sufficiently oppressive.

’I think of seeing Staffordshire again this autumn, and intend to find my way through Birmingham, where I hope to see you and dear Mrs. Careless well.  I am Sir,

’Your affectionate friend,

‘SAM.  JOHNSON.’

I wrote to him at different dates; regretted that I could not come to London this spring, but hoped we should meet somewhere in the summer; mentioned the state of my affairs, and suggested hopes of some preferment; informed him, that as The Beauties of Johnson had been published in London, some obscure scribbler had published at Edinburgh what he called The deformities of Johnson.

’To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

’DEAR SIR,

’The pleasure which we used to receive from each other on Good-Friday and Easter-day[466], we must be this year content to miss.  Let us, however, pray for each other, and hope to see one another yet from time to time with mutual delight.  My disorder has been a cold, which impeded the organs of respiration, and kept me many weeks in a state of great uneasiness; but by repeated phlebotomy it is now relieved; and next to the recovery of Mrs. Boswell, I flatter myself, that you will rejoice at mine.