Abstract
[Letter written from Lichfield to Miss Weston, and dated 29 October 1784] I have lately been in the almost daily habit of contemplating a very melancholy spectacle. The great Johnson is here, labouring under the paroxysms of a disease, which must speedily be fatal. He shrinks from the consciousness with the extremest horror. It is by his repeatedly expressed desire that I visit him often: yet I am sure he neither does, nor ever did feel much regard for me; but he would fain escape, for a time, in any society, from the terrible idea of his approaching dissolution. I never would be awed by his sarcasms, or his frowns, into acquiescence with his general injustice to the merits of other writers; with his national, or party aversions; but I feel the truest compassion for his present sufferings, and fervently wish I had power to relieve them.
Letters of Anna Seward (Edinburgh, 1811) I, 7–9.
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© 1987 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Seward, A. (1987). ‘A very melancholy spectacle’. In: Page, N. (eds) Dr Johnson. Interviews and Recollections. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08286-5_38
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