om Cornhill by the old coach-road.
Johnson seems to have been nearly fifteen hours on the journey.

[725] 'Aug. 13, 1783. I am now broken with disease, without the
alleviation of familiar friendship or domestic society. I have no middle
state between clamour and silence, between general conversation and
self-tormenting solitude. Levett is dead, and poor Williams is making
haste to die.' _Piozzi Letters_, ii.301. 'Aug. 20. This has been a day
of great emotion; the office of the Communion of the Sick has been
performed in poor Mrs. Williams's chamber.' _Ib_. 'Sept. 22. Poor
Williams has, I hope, seen the end of her afflictions. She acted with
prudence and she bore with fortitude. She has left me.

"Thou thy weary [worldly] task hast done,
Home art gone and ta'en thy wages."

[_Cymbeline_, act iv. sc. 2.]

Had she had good humour and prompt elocution, her universal curiosity
and comprehensive knowledge would have made her the delight of all that
knew her.' _Ib_. p. 311.

[726] Johnson (_Works_, viii. 354) described in 1756 such a companion as
he found in Mrs. Williams. He quotes Pope's _Epitaph on Mrs. Corbet_,
and continues:--'I have always considered this as the most valuable of
all Pope's epitaphs; the subject of it is a character not discriminated
by any shining or eminent peculiarities; yet that which really makes,
though not the splendour, the felicity of life, and that which every
wise man will choose for his final and lasting companion in the languor
of age, in the quiet of privacy, when he departs, weary and disgusted,
from the ostentatious, the volatile and the vain. Of such a character
which the dull overlook, and the gay despise, it was fit that the value
should be made known, and the dignity established.' See _ante_, i.232.

[727] _Pr. and Med_. p. 226. BOSWELL.

[728] I conjecture that Mr. Bowles is the friend. The account follows
close on the visit to his house, and contains a mention of Johnson's
attendance at a lecture at Salisbury.

[729] A writer in _Notes and Queries_, 1st S. xii. 149, says:--'Mr.
Bowles had married a descendant of Oliver Cromwell, viz. Dinah, the
fourth daughter of Sir Thomas Frankland, and highly valued himself upon
this connection with the Protector.' He adds that Mr. Bowles was an
active Whig.

[730] Mr. Malone observes, 'This, however, was certainly a mistake, as
appears from the _Memoirs_ published by Mr. Noble. Had Johnson been
furnished with the mater