in a firm tone, and added that he was very well and chose to lie so.  By this time, however, Mr. Crutchley was run down at Hetty’s intreaty, and had sent to fetch Pepys back.  He was got but into Upper Brook Street, and found his friend in a most violent fit of the apoplexy, from which he only recovered to relapse into another, every one growing weaker as his strength grew less, till six o’clock on Wednesday morning, 4th April, 1781, when he died.  Sir Richard Jebb, who was fetched at the beginning of the distress, seeing death certain, quitted the house without even prescribing.  Pepys did all that could be done, and Johnson, who was sent for at eleven o’clock, never left him, for while breath remained he still hoped.  I ventured in once, and saw them cutting his clothes off to bleed him, but I saw no more.”

[Footnote 1:  (Note by Mrs. T.).  “I rejected all propositions of the sort, and said, as he had got the money, he had the best right to throw it away....  I should always prefer my husband, to my children:  let him do his own way.”]

We learn from Madame D’Arblay’s Journal, that, towards the end of March, 1781, Mr. Thrale had resolved on going abroad with his wife, and that Johnson was to accompany them, but a subsequent entry states that the doctors condemned the plan; and “therefore,” she adds, “it is settled that a great meeting of his friends is to take place before he actually prepares for the journey, and they are to encircle him in a body, and endeavour, by representations and entreaties, ’to prevail with him to give it up; and I have little doubt myself but, amongst us, we shall be able to succeed.”  This is one of the oddest schemes ever projected by a set of learned and accomplished gentlemen and ladies for the benefit of a hypochondriac patient.  Its execution was prevented by his death.  A hurried note from Mrs. Thrale announcing the event, beginning, “Write to me, pray for me,” is endorsed by Madame D’Arblay:  “Written a few hours after the death of Mr. Thrale, which happened by a sudden stroke of apoplexy, on the morning of a day on which half the fashion of London had been invited to an intended assembly at his house in Grosvenor Square.”  These invitations had been sent out by his own express desire:  so little was he aware of his danger.

Letters and messages of condolence poured in from all sides.  Johnson (in a letter dated April 5th) said all that could be said in the way of counsel or consolation: 

“I do not exhort you to reason yourself into tranquillity.  We must first pray, and then labour; first implore the blessing of God, and those means which He puts into our hands.  Cultivated ground, has few weeds; a mind occupied by lawful business, has little room for useless regret.

“We read the will to-day; but I will not fill my first letter with any other account than that, with all my zeal for your advantage, I am satisfied; and that the other executors, more used to consider property than I, commended it for wisdom and equity.  Yet, why should I not tell you that you have five hundred pounds for your immediate expenses, and two thousand pounds a-year, with both the houses and all the goods?