And I think it highly to the honour of Mr. Windham, that his
important occupations as an active statesman did not prevent him from
paying assiduous respect to the dying Sage whom he revered, Mr. Langton
informs me, that, 'one day he found Mr. Burke and four or five more
friends sitting with Johnson. Mr. Burke said to him, "I am afraid, Sir,
such a number of us may be oppressive to you." "No, Sir, (said Johnson,)
it is not so; and I must be in a wretched state, indeed, when your
company would not be a delight to me." Mr. Burke, in a tremulous voice,
expressive of being very tenderly affected, replied, "My dear Sir, you
have always been too good to me." Immediately afterwards he went away.
This was the last circumstance in the acquaintance of these two eminent
men.'
The following particulars of his conversation within a few days of his
death, I give on the authority of Mr. John Nichols:--
'He said, that the Parliamentary Debates were the only part of his
writings which then gave him any compunction: but that at the time he
wrote them, he had no conception he was imposing upon the world, though
they were frequently written from very slender materials, and often from
none at all,--the mere coinage of his own imagination.
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