'DOM. DOCTORI HUDDESFORD, OXONIENSIS ACADEMIAE VICE-CANCELLARIO.

'INGRATUS plane et tibi et mihi videar, nisi quanto me gaudio
affecerint quos nuper mihi honores (te credo auctore) decrevit Senatus
Academicus, Iiterarum, quo lamen nihil levius, officio, significem:
ingratus etiam, nisi comitatem, qua vir eximius[831] mihi vestri
testimonium amoris in manus tradidit, agnoscam et laudem. Si quid est
unde rei lam gratae accedat gratia, hoc ipso magis mihi placet, quod eo
tempore in ordines Academicos denuo cooptatus sim, quo tuam imminuere
auctoritatem, famamque Oxonii Iaedere[832], omnibus modis conantur homines
vafri, nec tamen aculi: quibus ego, prout viro umbratico licuit, semper
restiti, semper restiturus. Qui enim, inter has rerum procellas, vel
Tibi vel Academiae defuerit, illum virtuti et literis, sibique et
posteris, defuturum existimo.

'S. JOHNSON.'

[Page 282: Johnson's letter of thanks. A.D. 1755.]

'To THE REVEREND MR. THOMAS WARTON.

'DEAR SIR,

'After I received my diploma, I wrote you a letter of thanks, with a
letter to the Vice-Chancellor, and sent another to Mr. Wise; but have
heard from nobody since, and begin to think myself forgotten. It is
true, I sent you a double letter[833], and you may fear an expensive
correspondent; but I would have taken it kindly, if you had returned it
treble: and what is a double letter to a _petty king_, that having