he horses on the
edge of a precipice between Vernon and St. Denis, in France, convince him
to the contrary, "for nothing came of it," he said, "except that Mr.
Thrale leaped out of the carriage into a chalk-pit, and then came up
again looking _as white_!" When the truth was, all their lives were
saved by the greatest Providence ever exerted in favour of three human
creatures; and the part Mr. Thrale took from desperation was the
likeliest thing in the world to produce broken limbs and death.

Fear was indeed a sensation to which Mr. Johnson was an utter stranger,
excepting when some sudden apprehensions seized him that he was going to
die, and even then he kept all his wits about him to express the most
humble and pathetic petitions to the Almighty. And when the first
paralytic stroke took his speech from him, he instantly set about
composing a prayer in Latin, at once to deprecate God's mercy, to satisfy
himself that his mental powers remained unimpaired, and to keep them in
exercise, that they might not perish by permitted stagnation. This was
after we parted; but he wrote me an account of it, and I intend to
publish that letter, with many more.

When one day he had at my house taken tincture of antimony instead of
emetic wine, for a vomit, he was himself the person to direct us what to
do for him, and managed with as much coolness and deliberation as if he
had been prescribing for an indifferent person. Though on another
occasion, when he had lamented in the most piercing terms his approaching
dissolution, and conjured me solemnly to tell him what I thought, while
Sir Richard Jebb was perpetually on the road to Streatham, and Mr.
Johnson seemed to think himself neglected if the physician left him for
an hour only, I made him a steady, but as I thought a very gentle
harangue, in which I confirmed all that the doctor had been saying; how
no present danger could be expected, but that his age and continued ill-
health must naturally accelerate the arrival of that hour which can be
escaped by none. "And this," says Johnson, rising in great anger, "is
the voice of female friendship, I suppose, when the hand of the hangman
would be softer."

Another day, when he was ill, and exceedingly low-spirited, and persuaded
that death was not far distant, I appeared before him in a dark-coloured
gown, which his bad sight, and worse apprehensions, made him mistake for
an iron-grey. "Why do you delight," said he, "thus to thick