I bought Croker’s Boswell; which I find good to refer to, but not to read; so hashed up it is with interpolations. Besides, one feels somehow that a bad Fellow like Croker mars the Good Company he introduces. One should stop with Malone, who was a good Gentleman: only rather too loyal to Johnson, and so unjust to any who dared hint a fault in him. Yet they were right. Madame D’Arblay, who was also so vext with Mrs. Piozzi, admits that she had a hard time with Johnson in his last two years; so irritable and violent he became that she says People would not ask him when they invited all the rest of the Party.
Why, my Paper is done, talking about these dead and gone whom you and I have only known in Print; and yet as well so as most we know in person. I really find my Society in such Books; all the People seem humming about me. But now let me hear of you, Allen: and of Wife and Family.
Ever yours, E. F. G.
To W. H. Thompson.
Market hill, Woodbridge.
[March, 1866.]
My dear Thompson,
I should write ‘My dear Master’ but I don’t know if you are yet installed. However, I suppose my Letter, so addressed, will find you and not the Old Lion now stalking in the Shades. . . .
In burning up a heap of old Letters, which one’s Executors and Heirs would make little of, I came upon several of Morton’s from Italy: so good in Parts that I have copied those Parts into a Blank Book. When he was in his money Troubles I did the same from many other of his Letters, and Thackeray asked Blackwood to give ten pounds for them for his Magazine. But we heard no more of them.
I have the usual Story to tell of myself: middling well: still here, pottering about my House, in which I expect an invalid Niece; and preparing for my Ship
in June. William Airy talks of coming to me soon. I am daily expecting the Death of a Sister in law, a right good Creature, who I thought would outlive me a dozen years, and should rejoice if she could. Things look serious about one. If one only could escape easily and at once! For I think the Fun is over: but that should not be. May you flourish in your high Place, my dear Master (now I say) for this long while.