[1110] 'Sept. 27, 1784. Went to see Blanchard's balloon. Met Burke and D. Burke; walked with them to Pantheon to see Lunardi's. Sept. 29. About nine came to Brookes's, where I heard that the balloon had been burnt about four o'clock.' Windham's Diary, p. 24.
[1111] His love of London continually appears. In a letter from him to Mrs. Smart, wife of his friend the Poet, which is published in a well-written life of him, prefixed to an edition of his Poems, in 1791, there is the following sentence:-'To one that has passed so many years in the pleasures and opulence of London, there are few places that can give much delight.'
Once, upon reading that line in the curious epitaph quoted in The Spectator;
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'Born in New-England, did in London die;' |
he laughed and said, 'I do not wonder at this. It would have been strange, if born in London, he had died in New-England.' BOSWELL. Mrs. Smart was in Dublin when Johnson wrote to her. After the passage quoted by Boswell he continued:—'I think, Madam, you may look upon your expedition as a proper preparative to the voyage which we have often talked of. Dublin, though a place much worse than London, is not so bad as Iceland.' Smart's Poems, i. xxi. For Iceland see ante, i. 242. The epitaph, quoted in The Spectator, No. 518, begins—
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Here Thomas Sapper lies interred. Ah why! Born in New-England, did in London die.' |
[1112] St. Mark, v. 34.
[1113] There is no record of this in the Gent. Mag. Among the 149 persons who that summer had been sentenced to death (ante, p. 328) who would notice these two?
[1114] See ante, p. 356, note 1
[1115] Johnson wrote for him a Dedication of his Tasso in 1763. Ante, i. 383.