For many years, when he was not disposed to enter into the conversation
going forward, whoever sat near his chair, might hear him repeating,
from Shakespeare,

"Aye, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod, and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods"--

And from Milton,

--"Who would lose,
For fear of pain, this intellectual being?"

By the death of Mrs. Williams he was left in a state of destitution,
with nobody but Frank, his black servant, to sooth his anxious moments.
In November, 1783, he was swelled from head to foot with a dropsy. Dr.
Brocklesby, with that benevolence with which he always assists his
friends, paid his visits with assiduity. The medicines prescribed were
so efficacious, that, in a few days, Johnson, while he was offering up
his prayers, was suddenly obliged to rise, and, in the course of the
day, discharged twenty pints of water.

Johnson, being eased of his dropsy, began to entertain hopes that the
vigour of his constitution was not entirely broken. For the sake of
conversing with his friends, he established a conversation club, to meet
on every Wednesday evening; and, to serve a man whom he had known in Mr.
Thrale's household for many years, the place was fixed at his house, in
Essex street, near the Temple. To answer the malignant remarks of sir