The dropsy made another attack, and was not easily ejected,
but at last gave way. The asthma suddenly remitted in bed, on the 13th
of August, and, though now very oppressive, is, I think, still something
gentler than it was before the remission. My limbs are miserably
debilitated, and my nights are sleepless and tedious. When you read
this, dear Sir, you are not sorry that I wrote no sooner. I will not
prolong my complaints. I hope still to see you _in a happier
hour_[1125], to talk over what we have often talked, and perhaps to find
new topicks of merriment, or new incitements to curiosity. I am, dear
Sir, &c. SAM. JOHNSON. Lichfield, Oct. 20, 1784.'
'TO JOHN PARADISE, ESQ.[1126]
DEAR SIR,
Though in all my summer's excursion I have given you no account of
myself, I hope you think better of me than to imagine it possible for me
to forget you, whose kindness to me has been too great and too constant
not to have made its impression on a harder breast than mine. Silence is
not very culpable when nothing pleasing is suppressed. It would have
alleviated none of your complaints to have read my vicissitudes of evil.
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