(_Page_ 490.)
Johnson (_Pr. and Med_. p. 191) writes:--'My first knowledge of Thrale
was in 1765.' In a letter to Mrs. Thrale, he says:--'You were but
five-and-twenty when I knew you first.' (_Piozzi Letters_, i. 284). As
she was born on Jan. 16/27, 1741, this would place their introduction in
1766. In another letter, written on July 8, 1784, he talks of her
'kindness which soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched.'
(_Ib_. ii. 376). Perhaps, however, he here spoke in round numbers. Mrs.
Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 125) says they first met in 1764. Mr. Thrale, she
writes, sought an excuse for inviting him. 'The celebrity of Mr.
Woodhouse (_post_, ii. 127), a shoemaker, whose verses were at that time
the subject of common discourse, soon afforded a 'pretence.' There is a
notice of Woodhouse in the _Gent. Mag_. for June, 1764 (p. 289).
Johnson, she says, dined with them every Thursday through the winter of
1764-5, and in the autumn of 1765 followed them to Brighton. In the
_Piozzi Letters_ (i. 1) there is a letter of his, dated Aug. 13, 1765,
in which he speaks of his intention to join them there.
'From that time,' she writes, 'his visits grew more frequent till, in
the year 1766, his health, which he had always complained of, grew so
exceedingly bad, that he could not stir out of his room in the court he
inhabited for many _weeks_ together, I think _months_.
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