'DEAR SIR,
'In perambulating Ivy-lane, Mr. Ryland found neither our landlord Horseman, nor his successor. The old house is shut up, and he liked not the appearance of any near it; he therefore bespoke our dinner at the Queen's Arms, in St. Paul's Church-yard, where, at half an hour after three, your company will be desired to-day by those who remain of our former society.
'Your humble servant,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
'Dec. 3.'
Four met—Johnson, Hawkins, Ryland, and Payne (ante, i. 243).
'We dined,' Hawkins continues, 'and in the evening regaled with coffee. At ten we broke up, much to the regret of Johnson, who proposed staying; but finding us inclined to separate, he left us with a sigh that seemed to come from his heart, lamenting that he was retiring to solitude and cheerless meditation.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 562.
Hawkins is mistaken in saying that they had a second meeting at a tavern at the end of a month; for Johnson, on March 10, 1784, wrote:—
'I have been confined from the fourteenth of December, and know not when I shall get out.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 351.
He thus describes these meetings:—