ary is a sad thing, and a strange one too,
when every body is willing to drop in, and for a quarter of an hour
at least, save you from a _tete-a-tete_ with yourself. I never could
catch a moment when you were alone whilst we were in London, and Miss
Thrale says the same thing."

A few days afterwards, June 19th, he writes:

"I am sitting down in no cheerful solitude to write a narrative which
would once have affected you with tenderness and sorrow, but which
you will perhaps pass over now with the careless glance of frigid
indifference. For this diminution of regard, however, I know not
whether I ought to blame you, who may have reasons which I cannot
know, and I do not blame myself, who have for a great part of human
life done you what good I could, and have never done you evil."

Two days before, he had suffered a paralytic stroke, and lost the
power of speech for a period. After minutely detailing his ailments
and their treatment by his medical advisers, he proceeds:

"How this will be received by you I know not. I hope you will
sympathise with me; but perhaps

"My mistress gracious, mild, and good,
Cries! Is he dumb? 'Tis time he should.

"But can this be possible? I hope it cannot. I hope that what, when I
could speak, I spoke of you, and to you, will be in a sober and
serious hour remembered by you; and surely it cannot be remembered
but with some degree of kindness. I have loved you with virtuous
affection; I have honoured you with sincere esteem. Let not all our
endearments be forgotten, but let me have in this great distress your
pity and your prayers. _You see, I yet turn to you with my complaints
as a settled and unalienable friend_; do not, do not drive me from
you, for I have not deserved either neglect or hatred.

"O God! give me comfort and confidence in Thee; forgive my sins; and
if it be thy good pleasure, relieve my diseases for Jesus Christ's
sake. Amen.

_"I am almost ashamed of this querulous letter, but now it is
written, let it go."_

The Edinburgh reviewer quotes the first paragraph of this letter to
prove Johnson's consciousness of change on her side, and omits all
mention of the passages in which he turns to her as "a settled and
unalienable friend," and apologises for his querulousness!

Some time before (November 1782), she had written to him:

"My health is growing very bad, to be sure. I will starve still more
rigidly for a while, and watch myself carefully; but more than