In the month of March 1775, he was gratified by the ti tle of Doctor of Laws, conferred on him by the university of Oxford, at the solicitation of Lord North. In Septem ber he visited France, for the first time, with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, and Mr. Baretti. His journey did not occupy more than two months. Foote, who happened to be at Paris at the same time, said, that the French were perfect ly astonished at his figure and manner, and at his dress, which was exactly the same with what he was accustomed to in London.—his brown clothes, black and plain shirt. Of the occurrences of this tour it is probable that he kept a journal, though unfortunately he never per fected it, from want of leisure or inclination. In the pre ceding year he had also made a journey into Wales; but Wales, he observed, is so little different from England, that it offers nothing to the speculation of the traveller.
In 1776, he wrote nothing for the public. In that year he removed front Johnson's Court to a larger house in Bolt Court, Fleet Street, with a garden, which he took de light in watering. A 300111 on the ground floor was as signed to Miss Williams, and the whole of the two pair of lairs' floors was made a repository for his books, consist ing of about 5000 volumes. Here, in the interval of his r si, cote at Streatham, he sat every morning receiving visits, and sometimes gave not inelegant dinners. Chemis try afforded him some amusement, and he had an appa ratus for the study of it in his house. He had also a labo ratory at Streatham, and diverted himself with drawing essences and colouring liquors for Mrs. Thrale. His last literary undertaking was in consequence of a request from the London booksellers, who had engaged in an edition of the works of the principal English poets, and wished to prefix to each a biographical and critical preface from his hand. Dr. Johnson executed this task with all the spirit and vigour of his best days. The publication of his Lives of the Poets began in 1779, and was completed in 1781. In a separate form, they compose four volumes octavo, and have made a valuable addition to English biography and criticism. The style of this performance is compara tively free from the stiffness and turgidity of his earlier compositions.
This was the last of Johnson's literary labours ; and, though completed when he was in his seventy-first year, sheti s that his faculties were in as vigorous a state as ever. In the year 1781, lie lost his valuable ft iend Thrale. Dr. Johnson's friends were in hopes that Mr. Thrale might have made a liberal provision for him for his life ; which as he (Mr. Thrale) left no son, and a very large fortune, it would have been highly to his honour to have done : but he bequeathed him only 2001. which was the legacy left to each of his executors. With Thrale, many of the com forts of Johnson's life might be said to expire. In the course of 1782 he complains, that he passed the summer at Streatham, but them was no Thrale. His visits to that place became less and less frequent, and, in the following year, entirely ceased. Ile kept up, however, a friendly correspondence with the widow of his friend, till she in formed him of her intention to marry Mr. Piozzi, an Italian music-master. Johnson, as the executor of her husband, thought himself bound, in duty to the memory of Thrale, and the welfare of his children, to remonstrate with her on the intended step. Mrs. Piozzi's answer contained an indignant vindication of her conduct and of her fame, and bade a final adieu to her adviser, until he should have al tered his opinion of the man of her choice. Of the charms of Dr. Johnson's friendship the lady time candidly ex presses herself in her Anecdotes : " Veneration for his virtue, reverence for his talents, delight in his conversa tion, and habitual endurance of a yoke my husband first put upon me, made one go on so long with Mr. Johnson ; but the perpetual confinement I will own to have been terrifying in the first years of our friendship, and irksome in the last, nor would 1 pretend to support it without help when my coadjutor was no more." Thus excluded from the most agreeable dwelling in which he hail ever been domesticated, he was compelled to return to his own house, to spend cheerless hours among the objects of his bounty, when increasing age and infir mities had made their company more obnoxious than when he left them; and the society of which he had recently been deprived rendered him comparatively less patient to endure it. From this time the narrative of his life is little
more than a recital of the pressures of melancholy and disease, and of numberless excursions taken to calm his anxiety, and soothe his apprehensions of the terrors of death, by flying, as it were, from himself. His health began to decline more visibly from the month of June 1783, when he had a paralytic stroke ; and although he recovered so far as to be able to take another journey to Litchfield and Oxford towards the close of the year, symp toms of a dropsy indicated the probability of his dissolu tion not being remote. Some relief, however, having been administered, he rejoined the society of his friends ; and, with a mind still curious, intelligent, and active, renewed his attention to the concerns of literature, and tried his faculties by Latin translations from the Greek poets. Dur ing his absence, his friends endeavoured to procure some addition to his pension, that lie might be enabled to try the genial effects of a warmer climate in the south of Europe. Application was accordingly made to the Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who applied to the Treasury for this purpose, but without success. His lordship, however, evinced his regard for our author, by offering to advance the sum of 5001. for this object ; an offer which Johnson declined, with the most dignified expressions of gratitude. Dr. Brock lesby also made a similar offer ; nor were there wanting others, who would have liberally supplied him for his con tinental tour. But these offers were not accepted, and his strength was becoming unequal to the effort of a journey. The aropsy and asthma were making hasty approaches. No man seems ever to have had the instinctive horror at the prospect of dissolution more strongly impressed on his mind than Johnson. Unfortunately for himself, he had a smattering of medical science, and imagining that the dropsical collection of. water which oppressed him might be drawn off by making incisions in the calves of his legs, he said to the surgeon, who was making slight scarifica tions in his swollen legs, " deeper, deeper. I want length of life, and you are afraid of giving me pain, which 1 do not value ;" and he afterwards. with his own hand, had punctures made for this purpose. Devotion, however, is said at last to have come to the support and pacification of his mind. He died on the lam of Deecrober, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. His remains, attended by a respectable concourse of friends, were interred in West minster Abbey, and a monumental statue has been since placed to his memory in St. Paul's Cathedral. He left his property, a few legacies excepted, to a faithful black ser vant, who had long lived with him. A short time before his dissolution he had burnt large masses of paper, and, among others, two large quarto volumes, contaiaing a full and most particular account of his life. The toss of which might be a subject of regret, if the biographical accounts were nut so numerous and authentic. Johnson was, at his death, and had been for some time before it, the most con spicuous character in English literature. He had less of the pure quality of genius than Goldsmith, but he had more energy in the expression of his prose style, and a more imposing air of consequence in giving weight to his opinions. He was not so truly eloquent as But ke, but he devoted himself more to literature. He was less learned than Warburton, but more popular from his choice of sub jects, and superior to that scholar in richness of fancy. There was no contemporary prose writer whose style was more poetical : there was no poet who combined with the talent for poetry a command of prose so valuable and strong ; yet his poetry is marked by precision of thought, and not by exquisite feeling, and his prose is far from be ing chaste or idiomatic. It abounds with the formality of antithesis, with latinisms, with too much abstraction of terms, with a rotundity of words that is often more sonorous than instructive, and with a pomp of metaphor that is fre quently applied to trivial ideas. Still there is a breadth and magnificence in his style, considered as the drapery of his thoughts, that makes the richness of its tissue atone for the stiffness of its folds. And if his colours of language be gorgeous, his ideas are For the most part sufficiently vi gorous to stand exposure in the strongest light.