story, which so much pleased Dr. Johnson, runs thus:--

On Thursday, November 25, Mrs. Flood and the three Misses Amphlett
were residing at Lord Lyttelton's house in Hill Street, Berkeley
Square. Who IS this Mrs. Flood? Frederick Flood (1741-1824)
married LADY Julia Annesley in 1782. The wife of the more famous
Flood suits the case no better: his wife was LADY F. M. Flood; she
was a Beresford. (The 'Dictionary of National Biography' is
responsible for these facts.) At all events, on November 25, at
breakfast, in Hill Street, Lord Lyttelton told the young ladies and
their chaperon that he had had an extraordinary DREAM.

He seemed to be in a room which a bird flew into; the bird changed
into a woman in white, who told him he should die in three days.

He 'did not much regard it, because he could in some measure account
for it; for that a few days before he had been with Mrs. Dawson,
when a robin-redbreast flew into her room.' On the morning of
Saturday he told the same ladies that he was very well, and believed
he should 'BILK THE GHOST.' The dream has become an apparition! On
that day--Saturday--he, with the ladies, Fortescue, and Wolsley,
went to Pitt Place; he went to bed after eleven, ordered rolls for
breakfast, and, in bed, 'died without a groan,' as his servant was
disengaging him from his waistcoat. During dinner he had 'a rising
in his throat' (a slight sickness), 'a thing which had often
happened to him before.' His physician, Dr. Fothergill, vaguely
attributed his death to the rupture of some vessel in his side,
where he had felt a pain in summer.

From this version we may glean that Lord Lyttelton was not himself