in his power, not to go abroad in the state of his health x ; but that if he was resolved on the first, and wished for something additional to his income, desired he would permit him to accom modate him out of his fortune with one hundred pounds a-year, during his travels, to be paid by instalments 2 .
'Ye little stars hide your diminished heads 3 .'
The reply to this generosity was to this effect : ' That he would not be obliged to any person's liberality, but to his King's 4 / The continuance of this design to go abroad, occasioned the application for an increase of pension, that is so honourable to those who applied for it, and to the Lord Chancellor who gave him leave to draw on his banker for any sum 5 . With the courage of a man, Johnson demanded to know of Brocklesby if his recovery was impossible ? Being answered in the affirmative ; ' then,' says he, ' I will take no more opium, and give up my physicians 6 . J
At last he said, ' if I am worse, I cannot go, if I am better I need not go, but if I continue neither better nor worse, I am as well where I am.' The writer of this sketch could wish to have committed to memory or paper all the wise and sensible things that dropped from his lips. If the one could have been Xeno- phon, the other was a Socrates. His benevolence to mankind was known to all who knew him. Though so declared a friend to the Church of England and even a friend to the Convocation 7 ,
1 'My journey to the continent ... 4 Windham says (post, p. 388), was never much encouraged by my that when Dr. Brocklesby made this physicians.' Life, iv. 349. offer ' Johnson pressed his hands and
2 'As an instance of extraordinary said, "God bless you through Jesus liberality of friendship, he told us, that Christ, but I will take no money Dr. Brocklesby had upon this occa- but from my sovereign." This, if sion offered him a hundred a year for I mistake not, was told the King his life. A grateful tear started into through West.'
his eye, as he spoke this in a falter- 5 Ante, i. 442.
ing tone.' Ib. iv. 338. See id. n. 2 6 Life, iv. 415.
for Brocklesby's ' liberality of friend- This was a few days before his
ship ' towards Burke, and ante, i. 443. death. Tyers in the next paragraph
3 ' At whose sight all the stars returns to the project of the visit to Hide their diminish'd heads.' Italy formed some months earlier.
Paradise Lost, iv. 34. 7 Ib. i. 464 ; iv - 2 77-
' Ye little stars ! hide your Smollett, after describing the meet- diminish'd rays.' ing of Convocation in 1717, con-
Pope, Moral Essays, iii. 282. tinues : ' The Convocation has not VOL. II. B b it
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