good deal of
controversy has been expended.

Johnson was deeply affected by the loss of a friend whose face, as he
said, "had never been turned upon him through fifteen years but with
respect and benignity." He wrote solemn and affecting letters to the
widow, and busied himself strenuously in her service. Thrale had made
him one of his executors, leaving him a small legacy; and Johnson took,
it seems, a rather simple-minded pleasure in dealing with important
commercial affairs and signing cheques for large sums of money. The old
man of letters, to whom three hundred a year had been superabundant
wealth, was amused at finding himself in the position of a man of
business, regulating what was then regarded as a princely fortune. The
brewery was sold after a time, and Johnson bustled about with an
ink-horn and pen in his button-hole. When asked what was the value of
the property, he replied magniloquently, "We are not here to sell a
parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond
the dreams of avarice." The brewery was in fact sold to Barclay,
Perkins, and Co. for the sum of 135,000_l_., and some years afterwards
it was the largest concern of the kind in the world.

The first effect of the change was probably rather to tighten than to
relax the bond of union with the Thrale family. During the winter of
1781-2, Johnson's infirmities were growing upon him. In the beginning of
1782 he was suffering from an illness which excited serious
apprehensions, and he went to Mrs. Thrale's, as the only house where he
could use "all the freedom that sickness requires." She nursed him
carefully, and expressed her feelings with characteristic vehemence in a
curious journal which he had encouraged her to keep. It records her
opinions about her affairs and her family, with a frankness remarkable
even in writing intended for no eye but her own. "Here is Mr. Johnson
very ill," she writes on the 1st of February;.... "What shall we do for
him? If I lose _him_, I am more than undone--friend, father, guardian,
confidant! God give me health and patience! What shall I do?" There is
no reason to doubt the sincerity of these sentiments, though they seem
to represent a mood of excitement. They show that for ten months after
Thrale's death Mrs. Thrale was keenly sensitive to the value of
Johnson's friendship.

A change, however, was approaching. Towards the end of 1780 Mrs. Thrale
had made the acquaintance of an Italian musici