The affection which Dr. Johnson bore to the memory of his wife was a pretty point in his heavy character: “March 28, 1753. I kept this day as the anniversary of my Letty’s death, with prayer and tears in the morning. In the evening I prayed for her conditionally, if it were lawful.” Her wedding-ring, when she became his wife, was, after her death, preserved by him as long as he lived with an affectionate care in a little round wooden box and in the inside of which he pasted a slip of paper thus inscribed by him in fair characters: “_Eheu!_ _Eliz. Johnson_ _Nupta Jul. 9^o, 1736,_ _Mortua, eheu!_ _Mart. 17^o, 1752._”[368] Husbands can love, where friends may see nothing to admire: Mrs. Johnson has been summed up as “perpetual illness and perpetual opium.”[369] Lord Eldon wore a mourning ring for his wife. In his will we find this: “And I direct that I may be buried in the same tomb at Kingston in which my most beloved wife is buried and as near to her remains as possible; and I desire that the ring which I wear on my finger may be put with my body into my coffin and be buried with me.”[370] The last gift of Tom Moore’s mother to him was her wedding-ring: “Have been preparing my dear mother for my leaving her, now that I see her so much better. She is quite reconciled to my going; and said this morning, ‘Now, my dear Tom, don’t let yourself be again alarmed about me in this manner, nor hurried away from your house and business.’ She then said she must, before I left her this morning, give me her wedding-ring as her last gift; and, accordingly sending for the little trinket-box in which she kept it, she, herself, put the ring on my finger.”[371] The poet Gray was the possessor of trinkets; and, perhaps, we may refer these to the “effeminacy” and “visible fastidiousness” mentioned in Temple’s Life, (adopted by Mason.) In his will, the poet gives an amount of stock to Richard Stonehewer, and adds: “and I beg his acceptance of one of my diamond rings,” while to Dr. Thomas Wharton he bequeaths £500--and, “I desire him also to accept of one of my diamond rings.” He bequeaths his watches, _rings_, etc., to his cousins Mary Antrobus and Dorothy Comyns, to be equally and amicably shared between them.