412 Minor Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson.
Dr. Johnson once collected a sum of money to redeem his clothes, which in two days after were pawned again. 'This/ said the Doctor, 'was when my acquaintances were few, and most of them as poor as myself. The money was collected by shillings.'
On the morning of Dec. 7, 1784, only six days before his death, Dr. Johnson requested to see the editor of these anecdotes 1 , from whom he had borrowed some of the early volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine, with a professed intention to point out the pieces which he had written in that collection. The books lay on the table, with many leaves doubled down, particularly those which contained his share in the Parliamentary Debates ; and such was the goodness of Johnson's heart, that he solemnly declared, that 'the only part of his writings which then gave him any compunction, was his account of the debates in the Magazine ; but that at the time he wrote them he did not think he was imposing on the world 2 . The mode/ he said, ' was to fix upon a speaker's name, then to conjure up an answer. He wrote these debates with more velocity than any other of his productions ; often three columns of the magazine within the hour. He once wrote ten pages in one day.'
Dr. Johnson said to me, 'I may possibly live, or rather breathe, three days, or perhaps three weeks ; but I find myself daily and gradually worse.' . . . Before I quitted him, he asked, whether any of the family of Faden, the printer, were living. Being told that the geographer near Charing Cross was Faden's son, he said, after a short pause, 'I borrowed a guinea of his father near thirty years ago ; be so good as to take this, and pay it for me V
During the whole time of my intimacy with him, he rarely permitted me to depart without some sententious advice. At the latest of these affecting interviews, . . . his words at parting were, ' Take care of your eternal salvation. Remember to
1 Life, iv. 407 ; ante, i. 446. in which the Idler was published, so
2 Ante, ii. 342. that he could have stopped the guinea
3 Faden for a few weeks had had out of the money due to Johnson. a share in the Universal Chronicle Life, i. 330, n. 3 ; ante, i. 447.
observe
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