I bought Croker's Boswell; which I find good to refer to, but not to read; so hashed up it is with interpolations. Besides, one feels somehow that a bad Fellow like Croker mars the Good Company he introduces. One should stop with Malone, who was a good Gentleman: only rather too loyal to Johnson, and so unjust to any who dared hint a fault in him. Yet _they_ were right. Madame D'Arblay, who was also so vext with Mrs. Piozzi, admits that she had a hard time with Johnson in his last two years; so irritable and violent he became that she says People would not ask _him_ when they invited all the rest of the Party. Why, my Paper is done, talking about these dead and gone whom you and I have only known in Print; and yet as well so as most we know in person. I really find my Society in such Books; all the People seem humming about me. But now let me hear of you, Allen: and of Wife and Family. Ever yours, E. F. G. _To W. H. Thompson_. MARKET HILL, WOODBRIDGE. [_March_, 1866.] MY DEAR THOMPSON, I should write 'My dear Master' but I don't know if you are yet installed. However, I suppose my Letter, so addressed, will find you and not the Old Lion now stalking in the Shades. . . . In burning up a heap of old Letters, which one's Executors and Heirs would make little of, I came upon several of Morton's from Italy: so good in Parts that I have copied those Parts into a Blank Book. When he was in his money Troubles I did the same from many other of his Letters, and Thackeray asked Blackwood to give ten pounds for them for his Magazine. But we heard no more of them. I have the usual Story to tell of myself: middling well: still here, pottering about my House, in which I expect an invalid Niece; and preparing for my Ship in June. William Airy talks of coming to me soon. I am daily expecting the Death of a Sister in law, a right good Creature, who I thought would outlive me a dozen years, and should rejoice if she could. Things look serious about one. If one only could escape easily and at once! For _I_ think the Fun is over: but that should not be. May you flourish in your high Place, my dear Master (now I say) for this long while. [_June_, 1866.] MY DEAR THOMPSON, I won't say that I should have gone to Ely under any Circumstances, though it is the last Place I have been to stay at with a Friend: three years ago! And all my Stays there were very pleasant indeed: and I do not the less thank you for all your Constancy and Kindness. But one is got down yet deeper in one's Way of Life: of which enough has been said. William Airy was to have come here about this time: and him I am obliged to put off because another old Fellow Collegian, Duncan, {77} who has scarce stirred from his Dorsetshire Parsonage these twenty years, was seized with a Passion to see me just once more, he says: and he is now with me: a Hypochondriack Man, nervous, and restless, with a vast deal of uncouth Humour. . . .