Johnson to Mrs. Thrale: 

“March 10th, 1784.

“Your kind expressions gave me great pleasure; do not reject me from your thoughts.  Shall we ever exchange confidence by the fireside again?”

He was so absorbed with his own complaints as to make no allowance for hers.  Yet her health was in a very precarious state, and in the autumn of the same year, his complaints of silence and neglect were suspended by the intelligence that her daughter Sophia was lying at death’s door.  On March 27th, 1784, she writes: 

“You tell one of my daughters that you know not with distinctness the cause of my complaints.  I believe she who lives with me knows them no better; one very dreadful one is however removed by dear Sophia’s recovery.  It is kind in you to quarrel no more about expressions which were not meant to offend; but unjust to suppose, I have not lately thought myself dying.  Let us, however, take the Prince of Abyssinia’s advice, and not add to the other evils of life the bitterness of controversy. If courage is a noble and generous quality, let us exert it to the last, and at the last:  if faith is a Christian virtue, let us willingly receive and accept that support it will most surely bestow—­and do permit me to repeat those words with which I know not why you were displeased:  Let us leave behind us the best example that we can.

“All this is not written by a person in high health and happiness, but by a fellow-sufferer, who has more to endure than she can tell, or you can guess; and now let us talk of the Severn salmons, which will be coming in soon; I shall send you one of the finest, and shall be glad to hear that your appetite is good.”

Johnson to Mrs. Thrale: 

“April 21st, 1784.

“The Hooles, Miss Burney, and Mrs. Hull (Wesley’s sister), feasted yesterday with me very cheerfully on your noble salmon.  Mr. Allen could not come, and I sent him a piece, and a great tail is still left.”

“April 26th, 1784.

“Mrs. Davenant called to pay me a guinea, but I gave two for you.  Whatever reasons you have for frugality, it is not worth while to save a guinea a year by withdrawing it from a public charity.”

“Whilst I am writing, the post has brought me your kind letter.  Do not think with dejection of your own condition:  a little patience will probably give you health:  it will certainly give you riches, and all the accommodations that riches can procure.”

Up to this time she had put an almost killing restraint on her inclinations, and had acted according to Johnson’s advice in everything but the final abandonment of Piozzi; yet Boswell reports him as saying, May 16th:  “Sir, she has done everything wrong since Thrale’s bridle was off her neck.”

The next extracts are from “Thraliana”: