This was exceedingly entertaining to the
company who were present, and many a time afterwards it furnished a
pleasant topick of merriment: 'The Ambassadour says well,' became a
laughable term of applause, when no mighty matter had been expressed.
I left London on Monday, October 15, and accompanied Colonel Stuart to
Chester, where his regiment was to lye for some time.
1780: AETAT. 71.]--In 1780, the world was kept in impatience for the
completion of his Lives of the Poets, upon which he was employed so far
as his indolence allowed him to labour.
His friend Dr. Lawrence having now suffered the greatest affliction to
which a man is liable, and which Johnson himself had felt in the most
severe manner; Johnson wrote to him in an admirable strain of sympathy
and pious consolation.
'TO DR. LAWRENCE.
'DEAR SIR,--At a time when all your friends ought to shew their
kindness, and with a character which ought to make all that know you
your friends, you may wonder that you have yet heard nothing from me.
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