ung folks.'
_Piozzi Letters_, ii. 177. On Sept. 2, 1784, he wrote to Mr. Sastres the
Italian master:--'I have hope of standing the English winter, and of
seeing you, and reading _Petrarch_ at Bolt-court.' _Ib_. p. 407.

[1158] _Life of Johnson_, p. 7.

[1159] It is a most agreeable circumstance attending the publication of
this Work, that Mr. Hector has survived his illustrious schoolfellow so
many years; that he still retains his health and spirits; and has
gratified me with the following acknowledgement: 'I thank you, most
sincerely thank you, for the great and long continued entertainment your
_Life of Dr. Johnson_ has afforded me, and others, of my particular
friends.' Mr. Hector, besides setting me right as to the verses on a
sprig of Myrtle, (see vol. i. p. 92, note,) has favoured me with two
English odes, written by Dr. Johnson, at an early period of his life,
which will appear in my edition of his poems. BOSWELL. See _ante_, i.
16, note 1.

[1160] The editor of the _Biographia Britannica. Ante_, iii. 174.

[1161] On Dec. 23, Miss Adams wrote to a friend:--'We are all under the
sincerest grief for the loss of poor Dr. Johnson. He spent three or four
days with my father at Oxford, and promised to come again; as he was, he
said, nowhere so happy.' _Pemb. Coll. MSS._

[1162] See _ante_, p. 293.

[1163] Mr. Strahan says (Preface, p. iv.) that Johnson, being hindered
by illness from revising these prayers, 'determined to give the MSS.,
without revision, in charge to me. Accordingly one morning, on my
visiting him by desire at an early hour, he put these papers into my
hands, with instructions for committing them to the press, and with a
promise to prepare a sketch of his own life to accompany them.' Whatever
Johnson wished about the prayers, it passes belief that he ever meant
for the eye of the world these minute accounts of his health and his
feelings. Some parts indeed Mr. Strahan himself suppressed, as the Pemb.
Coll. MSS. shew (_ante_, p. 84, note 4). It is curious that one portion
at least fell into other hands (_ante_, ii. 476). There are other
apparent gaps in the diary which raise the suspicion that it was only
fragments that Mr. Strahan obtained. On the other hand Mr. Strahan had
nothing to gain by the publication beyond notoriety (see his Preface, p.
vi.). Dr. Adams, whose name is mentioned in the preface, expressed in a
letter to the _Gent. Mag._ 1785, p. 755, his disapproval of the
publication. Mr.