JOHNSON.'
On November 22, and December 21, I wrote to him from Edinburgh, giving a
very favourable report of the family of Miss Doxy's lover;--that after a
good deal of enquiry I had discovered the sister of Mr. Francis
Stewart[1285], one of his amanuenses when writing his _Dictionary_;--that
I had, as desired by him, paid her a guinea for an old pocket-book of her
brother's which he had retained; and that the good woman, who was in
very moderate circumstances, but contented and placid, wondered at his
scrupulous and liberal honesty, and received the guinea as if sent her
by Providence[1286].--That I had repeatedly begged of him to keep his
promise to send me his letter to Lord Chesterfield, and that this
_memento_, like _Delenda est Carthago_, must be in every letter that I
should write to him, till I had obtained my object[1287].
1780: AETAT. 71.--In 1780, the world was kept in impatience for the
completion of his _Lives of the Poets_, upon which he was employed so
far as his indolence allowed him to labour[1288].
I wrote to him on January 1, and March 13, sending him my notes of Lord
Marchmont's information concerning Pope;--complaining that I had not
heard from him for almost four months, though he was two letters in my
debt;--that I had suffered again from melancholy;--hoping that he had
been in so much better company, (the Poets,) that he had not time to
think of his distant friends; for if that were the case, I should have
some recompence for my uneasiness;--that the state of my affairs did not
admit of my coming to London this year; and begging he would return me
Goldsmith's two poems, with his lines marked[1289].
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