440 Letters of Dr. Johnson.
years with great tenderness. Being disgusted in the house he ran away to sea, and was in the Summer on board the ship stationed at Yarmouth to protect the fishery.
It [would] be a great pleasure and some convenience to me, if the Lords of the Admiralty would be pleased to discharge him, which as he is no seaman, may be done with little injury to the King's service.
You were pleased, Sir, to order his discharge in the Spring at the request of Mr. Wilkes, but I left London about that time and received no advantage from your favour. I therefore pre sume to entreat that you will repeat your order, and inform me how to cooperate with it so that it may be made effectual x .
I shall take the liberty of waiting at the Admiralty next Tuesday for your answer. I hope my request is not such as it is necessaiy to refuse, and what it is not necessary to refuse, I doubt not but your humanity will dispose you to grant, even to one that can make no higher pretensions to your favour, than,
Sir,
Your most obedient
and
Most humble Servant,
Gray's Inn 2 , SAM: JOHNSON.
November the 9th, 1759.
��_ ~ To THE REV. THOMAS PERCY 3 .
I should not think our visit an event so important as to require any previous Notification, but that Mrs. Williams tells me, such was your desire 4 . We purpose to set out on Monday
friend, Dr. Bathurst. The Colonel * According to Croker it was not
by his will left him his freedom, and till June of the following year that he
Dr. Bathurst was willing that he was discharged. Ib. i. 350 n.
should enter into Johnson's service.' 2 Letters^ i. 88.
Life,\. 239*1. ; ante, i. 391. According 3 From the original in the posses-
to Lord Mansfield's decision Barber sion of Mr. R. B. Adam, of Buffalo,
had become free the moment he New York.
landed in England, but it was not 4 Johnson declined an invitation to
till 1772 that this decision was given. visit Percy in September, 1761, as he
Life, iii, 87 n. wished to see the coronation. Letters,
morning
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