[Footnote 1:  This is the very accusation they brought against her.]

Johnson was not called in to counsel on these matters of the heart, but he was not cast off or neglected.  Madame D’Arblay lands him in Argyll Street on the 20th November, 1782.  We hear of him at Mrs. Thrale’s house or in her company repeatedly from Madame D’Arblay and Dr. Lort.  “Johnson,” writes Dr. Lort, January 28th, 1783, “is much better.  I saw him the other evening at Madame Thrale’s in very good spirits.”  Boswell says: 

“On Friday, March 21, (1783) having arrived in London the night before, I was glad to find him at Mrs. Thrale’s house, in Argyle Street, appearances of friendship between them being still kept up.  I was shown into his room; and after the first salutation he said, ’I am glad you are come; I am very ill’....

“He sent a message to acquaint Mrs. Thrale that I was arrived.  I had not seen her since her husband’s death.  She soon appeared, and favoured me with an invitation to stay to dinner, which I accepted.  There was no other company but herself and three of her daughters, Dr. Johnson, and I. She too said she was very glad I was come; for she was going to Bath, and should have been sorry to leave Dr. Johnson before I came.  This seemed to be attentive and kind; and I, who had not been informed of any change, imagined all to be as well as formerly.  He was little inclined to talk at dinner, and went to sleep after it; but when he joined us in the drawing-room he seemed revived, and was again himself.”

This is quite decisive so far as Boswell is concerned, and disposes at once of all his preceding insinuations to her disadvantage.  He had not seen her before since Thrale’s death; and now, finding them together and jealously scrutinising their tone and manner towards each, he imagined all to be as well as formerly.[1] That they were on the point of living apart, and of keeping up their habitual interchange of mind exclusively by letters, is no proof that either was capriciously or irrecoverably estranged.

[Footnote 1:  “Now on March 21, 1783, fifteen months before the marriage in question, Boswell speaks of the severance of the old friendship as effected:  ‘appearances of friendship,’ he says, ’were still maintained between them.’  Boswell was at feud with the lady when he wrote, as we all know.  But his evidence is surely sufficient as to the fact of the rupture, though not as to its causes.”—­(Edin.  Rev. p. 510.) Boswell’s concluding evidence, that to the best of his knowledge and observation, there was no change or rupture, is suppressed!]