Note 8: — Chapter IV
Reading edition
Boswell himself was feeling ill and melancholy during a considerable part of the year, and was much upset by Johnson's charges of affectation: it is easily conceivable that he shrank from the pain of being present at the death-bed of his friend, and believed too that his own distress could only irritate the other.8 But, whatever may have been the cause of his absence, it is impossible, if we consider his own words about the final parting, to doubt the sincerity of his affection.9