amid the hoarse insults of the people they sought to serve; and
you yourself shall be hunted like a wild beast. You shall see the prisons
filled to overflowing with men and women whose only crime was their love
for truth. And a libertine shall sit on the throne of the England that you
love. These things you shall see with those mild, dark eyes, and then
night, eternal night, shall settle down upon you; and for those idle orbs
no day shall dawn nor starry night appear, nor face of man nor child shall
be reflected there. Your sightlessness shall give those who owe you
gratitude and love, opportunity to filch your gold; and, lastly, fire
shall rob you of your books, and well-nigh all your treasures.

Like another Lear, your daughters shall neither esteem nor respect you,
and the lines you dictate shall be to them but the idle vaporings of a
mind diseased. Your acute ears shall hear these daughters express the wish
that you were dead; and then in your blindness you will give yourself into
the keeping of a woman as dull, inane and unfeeling as the foolish child
you first chose as wife. But with it all your obstinacy shall constitute
your power; and that beauty which was yours in youth shall be with you to
the last. You shall feel all the torments of the damned and become inured
to the scorching flames of hell! But, as recompense, the splendors of the
Celestial Kingdom shall open upon your inward vision, and your soul shall
behold that which the eyes of earth have lost. Something great and proud
shall go out from your presence to all the discerning ones who shall
approach you; and your end shall be like the setting of the sun, bright,
calm, poised and resplendent.

SAMUEL JOHNSON

* * * Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in
your outward rooms and was repulsed from your door; during which
time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which
it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the
verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of
encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not
expect, for I never had a patron before.

The shepherd in Vergil grew at last acquainted with Love, and
found him a native of the rocks.

Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached the
ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you ha