Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) Author and lexicographer, Autograph Letter Signed to Sophia Thrale (1771-1824), later Mrs Kenrik Hoare, seventh child and sixth daughter of Hester Lynch Thrale (later Mrs Piozzi), London 24 July 1783, 3 pages 4TO, annotated at the head (in another hand) with the numbers '314' and '38'/Footnote: The only known letter from Johnson to Sophia although there are several references in Johnson's published letters to correspondence between them (e.g. 'The reckoning between me and Miss Sophy is out of my head. She must write to tell me how it stands')./Printed in The Letters of Samuel Johnson, (ed. Bruce Bedford, 5 vols., Oxford, 1994, IV p. 175) with the note 'Present location unknown. Transcribed from a photostat in the Hyde Collection [Harvard]'./A charming and characteristic letter to one of Johnson's young friends (Sophia's twelfth birthday had been the day before, although the fact is not mentioned or alluded to in this letter), the elderly Johnson chides her for not thinking of herself as his favourite ('my favour will, I am afraid, never be worth much, but be its value more or less, You are never likely to lose it'); praising her arithmetical ability ('Never think, my Sweet, that you have arithmetick enough; when you have exhausted your master, buy Books, nothing amuses more harmlessly than computation', and pointing her to a 'curious calculation' relating to the capacity of Noah's Ark in Wilkins's Real Character ('An essay towards a Real Character and a philosophical language' (1668) by John Wilkins) (footnote to the published letter)./Samuel Johnson was a devoted and life-long friend of Hester Lynch Thrale (later Piozzi) and her most assiduous correspondent. The series of his known letters to Hester commence in 1765 and eventually end after their estrangement in 1783. He also wrote occasionally to her children, but the present letter is the only one surviving, as far as is known, to Sophia.