" Yes, an angel
so far as exalted language could make her one; and he had always
half-a-dozen angels or goddesses on his list. "_Je change d'objet,
mais la passion reste_." For this very reason, I repeat, his
affection for Mrs. Piozzi was not a deep, devoted, or absorbing
feeling at any time; and the gloom which settled upon the evening of
his days was owing to his infirmities and his dread of death, not to
the loosening of cherished ties, nor to the compelled solitude of a
confined dwelling in Bolt Court. The plain matter of fact is that,
during the last two years of his life, he was seldom a month together
at his own house, unless when the state of his health prevented him
from enjoying the hospitality of his friends. When the fatal marriage
was announced, he was planning what Boswell calls a jaunt into the
country; and in a letter dated Lichfield, Oct. 4, 1784, he says: "I
passed the first part of the summer at Oxford (with Dr. Adams);
afterwards I went to Lichfield, then to Ashbourne (Dr. Taylor's), and
a week ago I returned to Lichfield."
In the journal which he kept for Dr. Brocklesby, he writes, Oct. 20:
"The town is my element; there are my friends, there are my books to
which I have not yet bid farewell, and there are my amusements. Sir
Joshua told me long ago that my vocation was to public life; and I
hope still to keep my station, till God shall bid me _Go in peace_."
Boswell reports him saying about this time, "Sir, I look upon every
day to be lost when I do not make a new acquaintance.
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