gratitude, and actuated by friendship. When Mr. Thrale's perplexities disturbed his peace, dear Dr. Johnson left him scarce a moment, and tried every artifice to amuse as well as every argument to console him: nor is it more possible to describe than to forget his prudent, his pious attentions towards the man who had some years before certainly saved his valuable life, perhaps his reason, by half obliging him to change the foul air of Fleet Street for the wholesome breezes of the Sussex Downs. The epitaph engraved on my mother's monument shows how deserving she was of general applause. I asked Johnson why he named her person before her mind. He said it was "because everybody could judge of the one, and but few of the other." _Juxta sepulta est_ HESTERA MARIA _Thomae Cotton de Combermere baronetti Cestriensis filia_, _Johannis Salusbury armigeri Flintiensis uxor_. _Forma felix, felix ingenio_: _Omnibus jucunda_, _suorum amantissima_. _Linguis artibusque ita exculta_ _Ut loquenti nunquam deessent_ _Sermonis nitor_, _sententiarum flosculi_, _Sapientiae gravitas_, _leporum gratia_: _Modum servandi adeo perita_, _Ut domestica inter negotia literis oblectaretur_. _Literarum inter delicias_, _rem familiarem sedulo curaret_, _Multis illi multos annos precantibus_ _diri carcinomatis veneno contabuit_, _nexibusque vitae paulatim resolutis_, _e terris_--_meliora sperans_--_emigravit_. _Nata_ 1707. _Nupta_ 1739. _Obiit_ 1773. Mr. Murphy, who admired her talents and delighted in her company, did me the favour to paraphrase this elegant inscription in verses which I fancy have never yet been published. His fame has long been out of my power to increase as a poet: as a man of sensibility perhaps these lines may set him higher than he now stands. I remember with gratitude the friendly tears which prevented him from speaking as he put them into my hand. Near this place Are deposited the remains of HESTER MARIA, The daughter of Sir Thomas Cotton of Combermere, in the county of Cheshire, Bart., the wife of John Salusbury, of the county of Flint, Esquire. She was born in the year 1707, married in 1739, and died in 1773.