lways acute, lucid, and
original. That his judgment is often warped by a political bias can
scarcely be doubted; but there is no good reason to suspect that it is
ever perverted by malevolence or envy. The booksellers left it to him to
name his price, which he modestly fixed at 200 guineas; though, as Mr.
Malone says, 1000 or 1500 would have been readily given if he had asked
it. As he proceeded, the work grew on his hands. In 1781 it was
completed; and another 100_l_. was voluntarily added to the sum which
had been at first agreed on. In the third edition, which was called for
in 1783, he made several alterations and additions; of which, to shew
the unreasonableness of murmurs respecting improved editions, it is
related in the Biographical Dictionary [12], on the information of Mr.
Nichols, that though they were printed separately, and offered gratis to
the purchasers of the former editions, scarcely a single copy was
demanded.

This was the last of his literary labours; nor do we hear of his writing
any thing for the press in the meanwhile, except such slight
compositions as a prologue for a comedy by Mr. Hugh Kelly, and a
dedication to the King of the Posthumous Works of Pearce, Bishop of
Rochester.

His body was weighed down with disease, and his mind clouded with
apprehensions of death. He sought for respite from these sufferings in
the usual means--in short visits to his native place, or to
Brighthelmstone, and in the establishment of new clubs. In 1781, another
of these societies was, by his desire, formed in the city. It was to
meet at the Queen's Arms, in St. Paul's Churchyard; and his wish was,
that no patriot should be admitted. He now returned to the use of wine,
which, when he did take it, he swallowed greedily.

About this time Mr. Thrale died, leaving Johnson one of his executors,
with a legacy of 200_l_. The death of Levett, in the same year, and of
Miss Williams, in 1783, left him yet more lonely. A few months before
the last of these deprivations befel him, he had a warning of his own
dissolution, which he could not easily mistake. The night of the 16th of
June, on which day he had been sitting for his picture, he perceived
himself, soon after going to bed, to be seized with a sudden confusion
and indistinctness in his head, which seemed to him to last about half a
minute. His first fear was lest his intellect should be affected. Of
this he made experiment, by turning into Latin verse a short prayer