and first put upon me, and of which he
contentedly bore his share for sixteen or seventeen years, made me 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 could I pretend to support it without help, when my
coadjutor was no more. To the assistance we gave him, the shelter our
house afforded to his uneasy fancies, and to the pains we took to soothe
or repress them, the world perhaps is indebted for the three political
pamphlets, the new edition and correction of his "Dictionary," and for
the "Poets' Lives," which he would scarce have lived, I think, and kept
his faculties entire to have written, had not incessant care been exerted
at the time of his first coming to be our constant guest in the country,
and several times after that, when he found himself particularly
oppressed with diseases incident to the most vivid and fervent
imaginations. I shall for ever consider it as the greatest honour which
could be conferred on any one to have been the confidential friend of Dr.
Johnson's health, and to have in some measure, with Mr. Thrale's
assistance, saved from distress at least, if not worse, a mind great
beyond the comprehension of common mortals, and good beyond all hope of
imitation from perishable beings.

Many of our friends were earnest that he should write the lives of our
famous prose authors; but he never made any answer that I can recollect
to the proposal, excepting when Sir Richard Musgrave once was singularly
warm about it, getting up and entreating him to set about the work
immediately, he coldly replied, "_Sit down_, _sir_!"

When Mr. Thrale built the new library at Streatham, and hung up over the
books the portraits of his favourite friends, that of Dr. Johnson was
last finished, and closed the number. It was almost impossible _not_ to
make verses on such an accidental combination of circumstances, so I made
the following ones. But as a character written in verse will for the
most part be found imperfect as a character, I have therefore written a
prose one, with which I mean, not to complete, but to conclude these
"Anecdotes" of the best and wisest man that ever came within the reach of
my personal acquaintance, and I think I might venture to add, that of all
or any of my readers:--

Gigantic in knowledge, in virtue, in strength,
Our company closes with JOHNSON at length;
So the