The fact that he was knighted by Charles II. in 1671 is now memorable only for Johnson's characteristic remark. The lexicographer's love of truth and loyalty to his pet monarch struggle with each other in the equivocal compliment to Charles's virtue in rewarding excellence 'with such honorary distinctions at least as cost him nothing.' The good doctor died in 1682, in the seventy-seventh year of age, and met his end, as we are assured, in the spirit of his own writings. 'There is,' he admirably says, 'but one comfort left, that, though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.' Most men, for one reason or another, have at times been 'half in love with easeful death.' Sir Thomas gives his view more fully in another passage, in which he says, with his usual quaint and eloquent melancholy, 'When I take a full view and circle of myself, without this reasonable moderator and equal piece of justice, death, I do conceive myself the miserablest person extant. Were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not entreat a moment's breath from me. Could the devil work my belief to imagine I could never die, I could not outlive that very thought. I have so abject a conceit of this common way of existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think this to be a man, or to have according to the dignity of humanity. In expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life, yet, in my best meditations, do often defy death.'