[1287] See ante, i. 260, and post, June 4. 1781.
[1288] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on April 11—'You are at all places of high resort, and bring home hearts by dozens; while I am seeking for something to say about men of whom I know nothing but their verses, and sometimes very little of them. Now I have begun, however, I do not despair of making an end.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 100.
[1289] See ante, ii. 5.
[1290] A writer in Notes and Queries (3rd S., viii. 197) points out that Johnson, writing to a doctor, uses a doctor's language. 'Until very lately solution of continuity was a favourite phrase with English surgeons; where a bone was broken, or the flesh, &c. cut or lacerated, there was a solution of continuity.' See ante, ii. 106, for laceration.
[1291] He died March 11, 1780, aged 40. Gent. Mag. 1780, p. 155.
[1292]
'Animula, vagula, blandula,
Hospes comesque corporis,
Quæ nunc abibis in loca,
Pallidula, rigida, nudula?
Nec, ut soles, dabis joca.'
Adriani morientis ad animam suam.
'Poor little, pretty, fluttering thing,
Must we no longer live together?
And dost thou prune thy trembling wing,
To take thy flight thou know'st not whither?
Thy humorous vein, thy pleasing folly
Lies all neglected, all forgot;
And pensive, wavering, melancholy,
Thou dread'st and hop'st thou know'st not what.' Prior.
In The Spectator, No. 532, is a letter from Pope to Steele on these 'famous verses which the Emperor Adrian spoke on his death-bed.' See in Pope's Correspondence (Elwin's Pope, vi. 394), this letter to Steele of Nov. 7, 1712, for his version of these lines.