1775. The Thrales had just received a sum of £14,000. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—
'If I had money enough, what would I do? Perhaps, if you and master did not hold me, I might go to Cairo, and down the Red Sea to Bengal, and take a ramble to India. Would this be better than building and planting? It would surely give more variety to the eye, and more amplitude to the mind. Half fourteen thousand would send me out to see other forms of existence, and bring me back to describe them.' Piozzi Letters, i. 266.
'Regions mountainous and wild, thinly inhabited and little cultivated, make a great part of the earth, and he that has never seen them must live unacquainted with much of the face of nature, and with one of the great scenes of human existence.' Johnson's Works, ix. 36. 'All travel has its advantages. If the traveller visits better countries he may learn to improve his own; and if fortune carries him to worse he may learn to enjoy it.' Ib. p. 136.
To Dr. Taylor he wrote:—
'I came back last Tuesday from France. Is not mine a kind of life turned upside down? Fixed to a spot when I was young, and roving the world when others are contriving to sit still, I am wholly unsettled. I am a kind of ship with a wide sail, and without an anchor.' Ante, ii. 387, note 2.
1776. In the spring of this year everything was settled for his journey to Italy with the Thrales. Hannah More wrote (Memoirs, i. 74):—
'Johnson and Mr. Boswell have this day set out for Oxford, Lichfield, &c., that the Doctor may take leave of all his old friends previous to his great expedition across the Alps. I lament his undertaking such a journey at his time of life, with beginning infirmities. I hope he will not leave his bones on classic grounds.'
Boswell tells how—
'Speaking with a tone of animation Johnson said, "We must, to be sure, see Rome, Naples, Florence, and Venice, and as much more as we can."' Ante, iii. 19.
When the journey was put off by the sudden death of Mr. Thrale's son,
Boswell wrote:—