Two days before, he had suffered a paralytic stroke, and lost the power of speech for a period.  After minutely detailing his ailments and their treatment by his medical advisers, he proceeds: 

“How this will be received by you I know not.  I hope you will sympathise with me; but perhaps

  “My mistress gracious, mild, and good,
  Cries!  Is he dumb?  ’Tis time he should.

“But can this be possible?  I hope it cannot.  I hope that what, when I could speak, I spoke of you, and to you, will be in a sober and serious hour remembered by you; and surely it cannot be remembered but with some degree of kindness.  I have loved you with virtuous affection; I have honoured you with sincere esteem.  Let not all our endearments be forgotten, but let me have in this great distress your pity and your prayers. You see, I yet turn to you with my complaints as a settled and unalienable friend; do not, do not drive me from you, for I have not deserved either neglect or hatred.

“O God! give me comfort and confidence in Thee; forgive my sins; and if it be thy good pleasure, relieve my diseases for Jesus Christ’s sake.  Amen.

"I am almost ashamed of this querulous letter, but now it is written, let it go."

The Edinburgh reviewer quotes the first paragraph of this letter to prove Johnson’s consciousness of change on her side, and omits all mention of the passages in which he turns to her as “a settled and unalienable friend,” and apologises for his querulousness!

Some time before (November 1782), she had written to him: 

“My health is growing very bad, to be sure.  I will starve still more rigidly for a while, and watch myself carefully; but more than six months will I not bestow upon that subject; you shall not have in me a valetudinary correspondent, who is always writing such letters, that to read the labels tied on bottles by an apothecary’s boy would be more eligible and amusing; nor will I live, like Flavia in ’Law’s Serious Call,’ who spends half her time and money on herself, with sleeping draughts, and waking draughts, and cordials and broths.  My desire is always to determine against my own gratification, so far as shall be possible for my body to co-operate with my mind, and you will not suspect me of wearing blisters, and living wholly upon vegetables for sport.  If that will do, the disorder may be removed; but if health is gone, and gone for ever, we will act as Zachary Pearce the famous bishop of Rochester did, when he lost the wife he loved so—­call for one glass to the health of her who is departed, never more to return—­and so go quietly back to the usual duties of life, and forbear to mention her again from that time till the last day of it.”

Instead of acting on the same principle, he perseveres in addressing his “ideal Urania” as if she had been a consulting physician: 

“London, June 20th, 1783.