him from paying assiduous respect to the dying Sage whom he revered. Mr.
Langton informs me, that, 'one day he found Mr. Burke and four or five
more friends sitting with Johnson. Mr. Burke said to him, "I am afraid,
Sir, such a number of us may be oppressive to you." "No, Sir, (said
Johnson,) it is not so; and I must be in a wretched state, indeed, when
your company would not be a delight to me." Mr. Burke, in a tremulous
voice, expressive of being very tenderly affected, replied, "My dear
Sir, you have always been too good to me." Immediately afterwards he
went away. This was the last circumstance in the acquaintance of these
two eminent men[1239].'

The following particulars of his conversation within a few days of his
death, I give on the authority of Mr. John Nichols[1240]:--

'He said, that the Parliamentary Debates were the only part of his
writings which then gave him any compunction[1241]: but that at the time
he wrote them, he had no conception he was imposing upon the world,
though they were frequently written from very slender materials, and
often from none at all,--the mere coinage of his own imagination. He
never wrote any part of his works with equal velocity. Three columns of
the _Magazine_, in an hour, was no uncommon effort, which was faster
than most persons could have transcribed that quantity.

'Of his friend Cave, he always spoke with great affection. "Yet (said
he,) Cave, (who never looked out of his window, but with a view to the
_Gentleman's Magazine_,) was a penurious pay-master; he would contract
for lines by the hundred, and expect the long hundred; but he was a good
man, and always delighted to have his friends at his table."

'When talking of a regular edition of his own works, he said, "that he
had power, [from the booksellers,] to print such an edition, if his
health admitted it; but had no power to assign over any edition, unless
he could add notes, and so alter them as to make them new works; which
his state of health forbade him to think of. I may possibly live, (said
he,) or rather breath, three days, or perhaps three weeks; but find
myself daily and gradually weaker."

'He said at another time, three or four days only before his death,
speaking of the little fear he had of undergoing a chirurgical
operation, "I would give one of these legs for a year more of life, I
mean of comfortable life, not such as that which I now suffer;"--and
lamented much his inability to read during hi