What was the consequence of the requisition made by Dr. Douglas?  Johnson, whose ruling passion may be said to be the love of truth, convinced Lauder, that it would be more for his interest to make a full confession of his guilt, than to stand forth the convicted champion of a lie; and, for this purpose, he drew up, in the strongest terms, a recantation, in a letter to the reverend Mr. Douglas, which Lauder signed, and published in the year 1751.  That piece will remain a lasting memorial of the abhorrence, with which Johnson beheld a violation of truth.  Mr. Nichols, whose attachment to his illustrious friend was unwearied, showed him, in 1780, a book, called Remarks on Johnson’s Life of Milton; in which the affair of Lauder was renewed with virulence; and a poetical scale in the Literary Magazine, 1758, (when Johnson had ceased to write in that collection,) was urged as an additional proof of deliberate malice.  He read the libellous passage with attention, and instantly wrote on the margin:  “In the business of Lauder I was deceived, partly by thinking the man too frantick to be fraudulent.  Of the poetical scale, quoted from the magazine, I am not the author.  I fancy it was put in after I had quitted that work; for I not only did not write it, but I do not remember it.”  As a critic and a scholar, Johnson was willing to receive what numbers, at the time, believed to be true information:  when he found that the whole was a forgery, he renounced all connexion with the author.

In March, 1752, he felt a severe stroke of affliction in the death of his wife.  The last number of the Rambler, as already mentioned, was on the 14th of that month.  The loss of Mrs. Johnson was then approaching, and, probably, was the cause that put an end to those admirable periodical essays.  It appears that she died on the 28th of March, in a memorandum, at the foot of the Prayers and Meditations, that is called her Dying Day.  She was buried at Bromley, under the care of Dr. Hawkesworth.  Johnson placed a Latin inscription on her tomb, in which he celebrated her beauty.  With the singularity of his prayers for his deceased wife, from that time to the end of his days, the world is sufficiently acquainted.  On Easter day, 22nd April, 1764, his memorandum says:  “Thought on Tetty, poor dear Tetty! with my eyes full.  Went to church.  After sermon I recommended Tetty in a prayer by herself; and my father, mother, brother, and Bathurst, in another.  I did it only once, so far as it might be lawful for me.”  In a prayer, January 23, 1759, the day on which his mother was buried, he commends, as far as may be lawful, her soul to God, imploring for her whatever is most beneficial to her in her present state.  In this habit he persevered to the end of his days.  The reverend Mr. Strahan, the editor of the Prayers and Meditations, observes, “that Johnson, on some occasions, prays that the Almighty may have had mercy on his wife and Mr. Thrale; evidently supposing their sentence to have been already