“Mr. Thrale talks now of going to Spa and Italy again; how shall we drag him thither?  A man who cannot keep awake four hours at a stroke &c.  Well! this will indeed be a tryal of one’s patience; and who must go with us on this expedition?  Mr. Johnson!—­he will indeed be the only happy person of the party; he values nothing under heaven but his own mind, which is a spark from heaven, and that will be invigorated by the addition of new ideas.  If Mr. Thrale dies on the road, Johnson will console himself by learning how it is to travel with a corpse:  and, after all, such reasoning is the true philosophy—­one’s heart is a mere incumbrance—­would I could leave mine behind.  The children shall go to their sisters at Kensington, Mrs. Cumyns may take care of them all.  God grant us a happy meeting some where and some time!

“Baretti should attend, I think; there is no man who has so much of every language, and can manage so well with Johnson, is so tidy on the road, so active top to obtain good accommodations.  He is the man in the world, I think, whom I most abhor, and who hates and professes to hate me the most; but what does that signifie?  He will be careful of Mr. Thrale and Hester whom he does love—­and he won’t strangle me, I suppose.  Somebody we must have.  Croza would court our daughter, and Piozzi could not talk to Johnson, nor, I suppose, do one any good but sing to one,—­and how should we sing songs in a strange land?  Baretti must be the man, and I will beg it of him as a favour.  Oh, the triumph he will have! and the lyes he will tell!” Thrale’s death is thus described in “Thraliana”: 

“On the Sunday, the 1st of April, I went to hear the Bishop of Peterborough preach at May Fair Chapel, and though the sermon had nothing in it particularly pathetic, I could not keep my tears within my eyes.  I spent the evening, however, at Lady Rothes’, and was cheerful.  Found Sir John Lade, Johnson, and Boswell, with Mr. Thrale, at my return to the Square.  On Monday morning Mr. Evans came to breakfast; Sir Philip and Dr. Johnson to dinner—­so did Baretti.  Mr. Thrale eat voraciously—­so voraciously that, encouraged by Jebb and Pepys, who had charged me to do so, I checked him rather severely, and Mr. Johnson added these remarkable words:  “Sir, after the denunciation of your physicians this morning, such eating is little better than suicide.”  He did not, however, desist, and Sir Philip said, he eat apparently in defiance of control, and that it was better for us to say nothing to him.  Johnson observed that he thought so too; and that he spoke more from a sense of duty than a hope of success.  Baretti and these two spent the evening with me, and I was enumerating the people who were to meet the Indian ambassadors on the Wednesday.  I had been to Negri’s and bespoke an elegant entertainment.