[1243] Mr. Croker records 'the following communication from Mr. Hoole himself':—'I must mention an incident which shews how ready Johnson was to make amends for any little incivility. When I called upon him, the morning after he had pressed me rather roughly to read louder, he said, "I was peevish yesterday; you must forgive me: when you are as old and as sick as I am, perhaps you may be peevish too." I have heard him make many apologies of this kind.'
[1244] 'To his friend Dr. Burney he said a few hours before he died, taking the Doctor's hands within his, and casting his eyes towards Heaven with a look of the most fervent piety, "My dear friend, while you live do all the good you can." Seward's Biographiana, p. 601
[1245] Mr. Hoole, senior, records of this day:—'Dr. Johnson exhorted me to lead a better life than he had done. "A better life than you, my dear Sir:" I repeated. He replied warmly, "Don't compliment not." Croker's Boswell, p. 844
[1246] See ante, p. 293
[1247] The French historian, Jacques-Auguste de Thou, 1553-1617, author of Historia sui Temporis in 138 books.
[1248] See ante, ii. 42, note 2.
[1249] Mr. Hutton was occasionally admitted to the royal breakfast-table. "Hutton," said the King to him one morning, "is it true that you Moravians marry without any previous knowledge of each other?" "Yes, may it please your majesty," returned Hutton; "our marriages are quite royal" Hannah More's Memoirs, i. 318. One of his female-missionaries for North American said to Dr. Johnson:—'Whether my Saviour's service may be best carried on here, or on the coast of Labrador, 'tis Mr. Hutton's business to settle. I will do my part either in a brick-house or a snow-house with equal alacrity.' Piozzi's Synonymy, ii. 120. He is described also in the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, i. 251, 291.
[1250] Ante, ii. 402.
[1251] Burke said of Hussey, who was his friend and correspondent, that in his character he had made 'that very rare union of the enlightened statesman with the ecclesiastic.' Burke's Corres. iv. 270.
[1252] Boswell refers, I believe, to Fordyce's epitaph on Johnson in the Gent. Mag. 1785, p. 412, or possibly to an Ode on p. 50 of his poems.