t engaging
quality in a wife. But all this is perfectly compatible with his
fondness for her, especially when it is remembered that he had a high
opinion of her understanding, and that the impressions which her beauty,
real or imaginary, had originally made upon his fancy, being continued
by habit, had not been effaced, though she herself was doubtless much
altered for the worse. The dreadful shock of separation took place in
the night; and he immediately dispatched a letter to his friend, the
Reverend Dr. Taylor, which, as Taylor told me, expressed grief in the
strongest manner he had ever read; so that it is much to be regretted
it has not been preserved. The letter was brought to Dr. Taylor, at his
house in the Cloisters, Westminster, about three in the morning; and
as it signified an earnest desire to see him, he got up, and went to
Johnson as soon as he was dressed, and found him in tears and in extreme
agitation. After being a little while together, Johnson requested him
to join with him in prayer. He then prayed extempore, as did Dr. Taylor;
and thus, by means of that piety which was ever his primary object, his
troubled mind was, in some degree, soothed and composed.

The next day he wrote as follows:

'To THE REVEREND DR. TAYLOR.

'DEAR SIR,--Let me have your company and instruction. Do not live away
from me. My distress is great.

'Pray desire Mrs. Taylor to inform me what mourning I should buy for my
mother and Miss Porter, and bring a note in writing with you.

'Remember me in your prayers, for vain is the help of man. I am, dear
Sir, &c.

'March 18, 1752.'

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

That his sufferings upon the death of his wife were severe, beyond what
are commonly endured, I have no doubt, from the information of many
who were then about him, to none of whom I give more credit than to Mr.
Francis Barber, his faithful negro servant, who came into his family
about a fortnight after the dismal event. These sufferings were
aggravated by the melancholy inherent in his constitution; and although
he probably was not oftener in the wrong than she was, in the little
disagreements which sometimes troubled his married state, during which,
he owned to me, that the gloomy irritability of his existence was more
painful to him than ever, he might very naturally, after her death, be
tenderly disposed to charge himself with slight omissions and offences,
the sense of which would give him much uneasiness. Accordingly