lice. He read the
libellous passage with attention, and instantly wrote on the margin: "In
the business of Lauder I was deceived, partly by thinking the man too
frantick to be fraudulent. Of the poetical scale, quoted from the
magazine, I am not the author. I fancy it was put in after I had quitted
that work; for I not only did not write it, but I do not remember it."
As a critic and a scholar, Johnson was willing to receive what numbers,
at the time, believed to be true information: when he found that the
whole was a forgery, he renounced all connexion with the author.

In March, 1752, he felt a severe stroke of affliction in the death of
his wife. The last number of the Rambler, as already mentioned, was on
the 14th of that month. The loss of Mrs. Johnson was then approaching,
and, probably, was the cause that put an end to those admirable
periodical essays. It appears that she died on the 28th of March, in a
memorandum, at the foot of the Prayers and Meditations, that is called
her Dying Day. She was buried at Bromley, under the care of Dr.
Hawkesworth. Johnson placed a Latin inscription on her tomb, in which he
celebrated her beauty. With the singularity of his prayers for his
deceased wife, from that time to the end of his days, the world is
sufficiently acquainted. On Easter day, 22nd April, 1764, his memorandum
says: "Thought on Tetty, poor dear Tetty! with my eyes full. Went to
church. After sermon I recommended Tetty in a prayer by herself; and my
father, mother, brother, and Bathurst, in another. I did it only once,
so far as it might be lawful for me." In a prayer, January 23, 1759, the
day on which his mother was buried, he commends, as far as may be
lawful, her soul to God, imploring for her whatever is most beneficial
to her in her present state. In this habit he persevered to the end of
his days. The reverend Mr. Strahan, the editor of the Prayers and
Meditations, observes, "that Johnson, on some occasions, prays that the
Almighty _may have had mercy_ on his wife and Mr. Thrale; evidently
supposing their sentence to have been already passed in the divine mind;
and, by consequence, proving, that he had no belief in a state of
purgatory, and no reason for praying for the dead that could impeach the
sincerity of his profession as a protestant." Mr. Strahan adds, "that,
in praying for the regretted tenants of the grave, Johnson conformed to
a practice which has been retained by many learned members of the
est