uoted in _The
Spectator;_

'Born in New-England, did in London die;'

he laughed and said, 'I do not wonder at this. It would have been
strange, if born in London, he had died in New-England.' BOSWELL. Mrs.
Smart was in Dublin when Johnson wrote to her. After the passage quoted
by Boswell he continued:--'I think, Madam, you may look upon your
expedition as a proper preparative to the voyage which we have often
talked of. Dublin, though a place much worse than London, is not so bad
as Iceland.' Smart's _Poems_, i. xxi. For Iceland see _ante_, i. 242.
The epitaph, quoted in _The Spectator_, No. 518, begins--

Here Thomas Sapper lies interred. Ah why!
Born in New-England, did in London die.'

[1112] _St. Mark_, v. 34.

[1113] There is no record of this in the _Gent. Mag_. Among the 149
persons who that summer had been sentenced to death (_ante_, p. 328) who
would notice these two?

[1114] See _ante_, p. 356, note 1

[1115] Johnson wrote for him a Dedication of his _Tasso_ in 1763.
_Ante_, i. 383.

[1116] There was no information for which Dr. Johnson was less grateful
that than for that which concerned the weather. It was in allusion to
his impatience with those who were reduced to keep conversation alive by
observations on the weather, that he applied the old proverb to himself.
If any one of his intimate acquaintance told him it was hot or cold, wet
or dry, windy or calm, he would stop them, by saying, 'Poh! poh! you are
telling us that of which none but men in a mine or a dungeon can be
ignorant. Let us bear with patience, or enjoy in quiet, elementary
changes, whether for the better or the worse, as they are never
secrets.' BURNEY. In _The Idler_, No. II, Johnson shews that 'an
Englishman's notice of the weather is the natural consequence of
changeable skies and uncertain seasons... In our island every man goes
to sleep unable to guess whether he shall behold in the morning a bright
or cloudy atmosphere, whether his rest shall be lulled by a shower, or
broken by a tempest. We therefore rejoice mutually at good weather, as
at an escape from something that we feared; and mutually complain of
bad, as of the loss of something that we hoped.' See _ante_, i.
332, and iv. 353.

[1117] His _Account of the Musical Performances in Commemoration of
Handel_. See _ante_, p. 283.

[1118] The celebrated Miss Fanny Burney. BOSWELL.

[1119] Dr. Burney's letter must have been franked; otherwise there would