ot where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod, and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods"--

And from Milton,

--"Who would lose,
For fear of pain, this intellectual being?"

By the death of Mrs. Williams he was left in a state of destitution,
with nobody but Frank, his black servant, to sooth his anxious moments.
In November, 1783, he was swelled from head to foot with a dropsy. Dr.
Brocklesby, with that benevolence with which he always assists his
friends, paid his visits with assiduity. The medicines prescribed were
so efficacious, that, in a few days, Johnson, while he was offering up
his prayers, was suddenly obliged to rise, and, in the course of the
day, discharged twenty pints of water.

Johnson, being eased of his dropsy, began to entertain hopes that the
vigour of his constitution was not entirely broken. For the sake of
conversing with his friends, he established a conversation club, to meet
on every Wednesday evening; and, to serve a man whom he had known in Mr.
Thrale's household for many years, the place was fixed at his house, in
Essex street, near the Temple. To answer the malignant remarks of sir
John Hawkins, on this subject, were a wretched waste of time. Professing
to be Johnson's friend, that biographer has raised more objections to
his character, than all the enemies to that excellent man. Sir John had
a root of bitterness that "put rancours in the vessel of his peace."
Fielding, he says, was the inventor of a cant phrase, "Goodness of
heart, which means little more than the virtue of a horse or a dog." He
should have known, that kind affections are the essence of virtue: they
are the will of God implanted in our nature, to aid and strengthen moral
obligation; they incite to action: a sense of benevolence is no less
necessary than a sense of duty. Good affections are an ornament, not
only to an author, but to his writings. He who shows himself upon a cold
scent for opportunities to bark and snarl throughout a volume of six
hundred pages, may, if he will, pretend to moralise; but goodness of
heart, or, to use that politer phrase, "the virtue of a horse or a dog,"
would redound more to his honour. But sir John is no more: our business
is with Johnson. The members of his club were respectable for their
rank, their talents, and their literature. They attended with
punctuality, till about Midsummer, 1784, when, with some appea