The anxiety of his friends to preserve so estimable a life made them plan for him a retreat from the severity of a British winter to the mild climate of Italy; and, after consulting with Sir Joshua Reynolds, I wrote to Lord Thurlow, the Lord Chancellor, for such an addition to Johnson's income as would enable him to bear the expense.
Lord Thurlow, who highly valued Johnson, and whom Johnson highly valued, at first made a very favourable reply, which being communicated to Dr. Johnson, greatly affected him; but eventually he had to confess that his application had been unsuccessful, and made a counter proposal, very gratefully refused by Johnson, that he should draw upon him to the amount of £500 or £600.
On Wednesday, June 30, I dined with him, for the last time, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, no other company being present; and on July 2 I left London for Scotland.
Soon afterwards he had the mortification of being informed by Mrs. Thrale that she was actually going to marry Signor Piozzi, a papist, and her daughter's music-master. He endeavoured to prevent the marriage, but in vain.
Eleven days after I myself had left town, Johnson set out on a jaunt to Staffordshire and Derbyshire, flattering himself that he might be, in some degree, relieved; but towards the end of October he had to confess that his progress was slight. But there was in him an animated and lofty spirit, and such was his love of London that he languished when absent from it. To Dr. Brocklesby he wrote: "I am not afraid either of a journey to London, or of a residence in it. The town is my element; there are my friends, there are my books, to which I have not yet bid farewell, and there are my amusements. Sir Joshua told me long ago that my vocation was to public life, and I hope still to keep my station, till God shall bid me 'Go in peace.'"
He arrived in London on November 16. Soon after his return both the asthma and the dropsy became more violent and distressful, and though he was attended by Dr. Heberden, Dr. Brocklesby, Dr. Warren, and Dr. Butter, who all refused fees, and though he himself co-operated with them, and made deep incisions in his body to draw off the water from it, he gradually sank. On December 2, he sent directions for inscribing epitaphs for his father, mother, and brother on a memorial slab in St. Michael's Church, Lichfield. On December 8 and 9 he made his will; and on Monday, December 13, he expired about seven o'clock in the evening, with so little apparent pain that his attendants hardly perceived when his dissolution took place. A week later he was buried in Westminster Abbey, his old schoolfellow, Dr. Taylor, reading the service.
I trust I shall not be accused of affectation when I declare that I find myself unable to express all that I felt upon the loss of such a "Guide, Philosopher, and Friend." I shall, therefore, not say one word of my own, but adopt those of an eminent friend, which he uttered with an abrupt felicity: "He has made a chasm, which not only nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a tendency to fill up. Johnson is dead. Let us go to the next best: there is nobody; no man can be said to put you in mind of Johnson."