we find,
about a year after her decease, that he thus addressed the Supreme
Being: 'O LORD, who givest the grace of repentance, and hearest the
prayers of the penitent, grant that by true contrition I may obtain
forgiveness of all the sins committed, and of all duties neglected in
my union with the wife whom thou hast taken from me; for the neglect of
joint devotion, patient exhortation, and mild instruction.' The kindness
of his heart, notwithstanding the impetuosity of his temper, is well
known to his friends; and I cannot trace the smallest foundation for
the following dark and uncharitable assertion by Sir John Hawkins: 'The
apparition of his departed wife was altogether of the terrifick kind,
and hardly afforded him a hope that she was in a state of happiness.'
That he, in conformity with the opinion of many of the most able,
learned, and pious Christians in all ages, supposed that there was a
middle state after death, previous to the time at which departed
souls are finally received to eternal felicity, appears, I think,
unquestionably from his devotions: 'And, O LORD, so far as it may be
lawful in me, I commend to thy fatherly goodness the soul of my departed
wife; beseeching thee to grant her whatever is best in her present
state, and finally to receive her to eternal happiness.' But this state
has not been looked upon with horrour, but only as less gracious.

He deposited the remains of Mrs. Johnson in the church of Bromley,
in Kent, to which he was probably led by the residence of his friend
Hawkesworth at that place. The funeral sermon which he composed for her,
which was never preached, but having been given to Dr. Taylor, has been
published since his death, is a performance of uncommon excellence,
and full of rational and pious comfort to such as are depressed by
that severe affliction which Johnson felt when he wrote it. When it is
considered that it was written in such an agitation of mind, and in the
short interval between her death and burial, it cannot be read without
wonder.

From Mr. Francis Barber I have had the following authentick and artless
account of the situation in which he found him recently after his wife's
death:

'He was in great affliction. Mrs. Williams was then living in his house,
which was in Gough-square. He was busy with the Dictionary. Mr. Shiels,
and some others of the gentlemen who had formerly written for him, used
to come about him. He had then little for himself, but frequ