'My wife is so different from you and me that she dislikes travelling.' Ante, iii. 219.
Later on in the year Boswell records:—
'Dr. Johnson expressed a particular enthusiasm with respect to visiting the wall of China. I catched it for the moment, and said I really believed I should go and see the wall of China had I not children, of whom it was my duty to take care. "Sir, (said he,) by doing so you would do what would be of importance in raising your children to eminence. There would be a lustre reflected upon them from your spirit and curiosity. They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man who had gone to view the wall of China. I am serious, Sir."' Ante, iii. 269.
1780. In August he wrote to Boswell:—
'I know not whether I shall get a ramble this summer…. I hope you and I may yet shew ourselves on some part of Europe, Asia, or Africa.' Ante, iii. 435.
In the same year Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—
'I hope you have no design of stealing away to Italy before the election, nor of leaving me behind you; though I am not only seventy, but seventy-one.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 177.
On Oct. 17 he wrote:—
'The summer has been foolishly lost, like many other of my summers and winters. I hardly saw a green field, but staid in town to work, without working much.' Ante, iii. 441.
1784. Johnson's wish to go to Italy in the last year of his life was caused by the hope that it might be good for his health. 'I do not,' he wrote, 'travel for pleasure or curiosity; yet if I should recover,' he added, 'curiosity would revive.' Post, iv. 348.