Whilst the reviewer thinks he is strengthening one point, he is palpably weakening another.  She would not have been “mortally afraid of the Doctor’s coming,” if she had already thrown him off and finally broken with him?  That she was afraid, and had reason to be so, is quite consistent with my theory, quite inconsistent with Lord Macaulay’s and the critic’s.  Johnson’s letter (No. 3) is that of a coarse man who had always been permitted to lecture and dictate with impunity.  Her letter (No. 4) is that of a sensitive woman, who, for the first time, resents with firmness and retorts with dignity.  The sentences I have printed in italics speak volumes.  “Never did I oppose your will, or control your wish, nor can your unmitigated severity itself lessen my regard.”  There is a shade of submissiveness in her reply, yet, on receiving it, he felt as a falcon might feel if a partridge were to shew fight.  Nothing short of habitual deference on her part, and unrepressed indulgence of temper on his, can account for or excuse his not writing before this unexpected check as he wrote after it.  If he had not been systematically humoured and flattered, he would have seen at a glance that he had “no pretence to resent,” and have been ready at once to make the best return in his power for “that kindness which soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched.”  She wrote him a kind and affectionate farewell; and there (so far as we know) ended their correspondence.  But in “Thraliana” she sets down: 

“Milan, 27th Nov. 1784.—­I have got Dr. Johnson’s picture here, and expect Miss Thrale’s with impatience.  I do love them dearly, as ill as they have used me, and always shall.  Poor Johnson did not mean to use me ill.  He only grew upon indulgence till patience could endure no further.”

In a letter to Mr. S. Lysons from Milan, dated December 7th, 1784, which proves that she was not frivolously employed, she says: 

“My next letter shall talk of the libraries and botanical gardens, and twenty other clever things here.  I wish you a comfortable Christmas, and a happy beginning of the year 1785.  Do not neglect Dr. Johnson:  you will never see any other mortal so wise or so good.  I keep his picture in my chamber, and his works on my chimney.”

  “Forgiveness to the injured doth belong,
  But they ne’er pardon who have done the wrong.”

What he said of her can only be learned from her bitter enemies or hollow friends, who have preserved nothing kindly or creditable.

Hawkins states that a letter from Johnson to himself contained these words:—­“Poor Thrale!  I thought that either her virtue or her vice (meaning her love of her children or her pride) would have saved her from such a marriage.  She is now become a subject for her enemies to exult over, and for her friends, if she has any left, to forget or pity.”

Madame D’Arblay gives two accounts of the last interview she ever had with Johnson,—­on the 25th November, 1784.  In the “Diary” she sets down: