line, have improved off the face of
the earth, more than one classic spot, noted in our local history,
foremost among which we must place the house of Mr. Hector, the old
friend and schoolfellow of Dr. Samuel Johnson. The great lexicographer
spent many happy hours in the abode of his friend, and as at one time
there was a slight doubt on the matter, it is as well to place on record
here that the house in which Hector, the surgeon, resided, was No. 1, in
the Old Square, at the corner of the Minories, afterwards occupied by
Mr. William Scholefield, Messrs. Jevons and Mellor's handsome pile now
covering the spot. The old rate books prove this beyond a doubt. Hector
died there on the 2nd of September, 1794, after having practised as a
surgeon, in Birmingham, for the long period of sixty-two years. He was
buried in a vault at Saint Philip's Church, Birmingham, where, in the
middle aisle, in the front of the north gallery, an elegant inscription
to his memory was placed. Hector never married, and Mrs. Careless, a
clergyman's widow, Hector's own sister, and Johnson's "first love,"
resided with him, and appears by the burial register of St. Philip's to
have died in October, 1788, and to have been buried there, probably in
the vault in which her brother was afterwards interred. In the month of
November, 1784, just a month before his own decease, Johnson passed a
few days with his friend, Hector, at his residence in the Old Square,
who, in a letter to Boswell, thus speaks of the visit:--"He" (Johnson)
"was very solicitous with me, to recollect some of our most early
transactions, and to transmit them to him, for I perceived nothing gave
him greater pleasure than calling to mind those days of our innocence. I
complied with his request, and he only received them a few days before
his death." Johnson arrived in London from Birmingham on the 16th of
November, and on the following day wrote a most affectionate letter to
Mr. Hector, which concludes as follows:--

"Let us think seriously on our duty. I send my kindest respects to
dear Mrs. Careless. Let me have the prayers of both. We have all lived
long, and must soon part. God have mercy upon us, for the sake of our
Lord Jesus Christ! Amen!"

This was probably nearly the last letter Johnson wrote, for on the 13th
of the following month, just twenty-seven days after his arrival in
London from Birmingham, oppressed with disease, he was numbered with the
dead.

~Hinkleys.~--O