ably referred to it.

Preceding commentators were not bound to know what is now learned
from "Thraliana"; but they were bound to know what might always have
been learned from Johnson's printed letters; and the tone of these
from the separation in April, 1783, to the marriage in July, 1784, is
identically the same as at any period of the intimacy which can be
specified. There are the same warm expressions of regard, the same
gratitude for acknowledged kindness, the same alternations of hope
and disappointment, the same medical details, and the same reproaches
for silence or fancied coldness, in which he habitually indulged
towards all his female correspondents. Shew me a complaint or
reproach, and I will instantly match it with one from a period when
the intimacy was confessedly and notoriously at its height. If her
occasional explosions of irritability are to be counted, what
inference is to be drawn from Johnson's depreciatory remarks on her,
and indeed on everybody, so carefully treasured up by Hawkins and
Boswell?

On June 13th, 1783, he writes to her:

"Your last letter was very pleasing; it expressed kindness to me, and
some degree of placid acquiescence in your present mode of life,
_which is, I think, the best which is at present within your reach_.

"My powers and attention have for a long time been almost wholly
employed upon my health, I hope not wholly without success, but
solitude is very tedious."

She replies:

"Bath, June 15th, 1783.

"I believe it is too true, my dear Sir, that you think on little
except yourself and your own health, but then they are subjects on
which every one else would think too--and that is a great
consolation.

"I am willing enough to employ all my thoughts upon _myself_, but
there is nobody here who wishes to think with or about me, so I am
very sick and a little sullen, and disposed now and then to say, like
king David, 'My lovers and my friends have been put away from me, and
my acquaintance hid out of my sight.' If the last letter I wrote
showed some degree of placid acquiescence in a situation, which,
however displeasing, is the best I can get at just now, I pray God to
keep me in that disposition, and to lay no more calamity upon me
which may again tempt me to murmur and complain. _In the meantime
assure yourself of my undiminished kindness and veneration: they have
been long out of accident's power either to lessen or increase."_....

"That _you_ should be solit