efficient, that he could not distinguish the hour upon the town-clock.

Johnson, upon the first violent attack of this disorder, strove to overcome it by forcible exertions1. He frequently walked to Birmingham and back again, and tried many other expedients, but all in vain. His expression concerning it to me was, "I did not then know how to manage it." His distress became so intolerable, that he applied to Dr. Swinfen, physician in Lichfield, his godfather, and put into his hands a state of his case, written in Latin. Dr. Swinfen was so much struck with the extraordinary acuteness, research, and eloquence of this paper, that in his zeal for his godson he showed it to several people. His daughter, Mrs. Desmoulins, who was many years humanely supported in Dr. Johnson's house in London, told me, that upon his discovering that Dr. Swinfen had communicated his case, he was so much offended, that he was never afterwards fully reconciled to him. He indeed had good reason to be offended; for though Dr. Swinfen's motive was good, he inconsiderately betrayed a matter deeply interesting and of great delicacy, which had been intrusted to him in confidence; and exposed a complaint of his young friend and patient, which, in the superficial opinion of the generality of mankind, is attended with contempt and disgrace.

European languages (amongst the rest, modern Greek and Turkish) with great facility. This unusual accomplishment was probably the cause of his intimacy with Sir William Jonés, to whom we learn (Teignmouth's Life of Jones, p. 221.) that he addressed a distich in ancient Greek, which had the singular honour of being copied by the hand of the celebrated Duchess of Devonshire. Mr. Paradise became intimate with Johnson in the latter portion of the Doctor's life; was a member of his Essex-street club; and attended his funeral. Mr. Paradise died, at his house in Titchfield-street, 12 Dec. 1795. -ED.]

1

[It appears, from his own account of his father (ante, p. 4), that he thought exercise and change of place alleviated this disease, which he inherited from him. It seems that he did not, in his own mind, connect this disease with the scrofula, which he derived, as he thought, from his mother, or, as Dr. Swinfen believed, from his nurse.-ED.]

* [See ante, p. 15.—En.]

But let not little men triumph upon knowing that Johnson was an HYPOCHONDRIACK, was subject to what the learned, philosophical, and pious Dr. Cheyne has so well treated under the title of "The English Malady." Though he suffered severely from it, he was not therefore degraded. The powers of his great mind might be troubled, and their full exercise suspended at times; but the mind itself was ever entire. As a proof of this, it is only necessary to consider, that when he was at the very worst, he composed that state of his own case, which showed an uncommon vigour, not only of fancy and taste, but of judgement. I am aware that he himself was too ready to call such a complaint by the name of madness; in conformity with which notion, he has traced its gradations, with exquisite nicety, in one of the chapters of his RASSELAS. But there is surely a clear distinction between a disorder which affects only the imagination and spirits, while the judgement is sound, and a disorder by which the judgement itself is impaired. This distinction was made to me by the late Professor Gaubius of Leyden, physician to the Prince of Orange, in a conversation which I had with him several years ago, and he expanded it thus: " If (said he) a man tell me that he is grievously disturbed, for that he imagines he sees a ruffian coming against him with a drawn sword, though at the same time he is conscious it is a delusion, I pronounce him to have a disordered imagination; but if a man tells me that he sees this, and in consternation calls to me to look at it, I pronounce him to be mad."

1

It is a common effect of low spirits or melancholy, to make those who are afflicted with it imagine that they are actually suffering those evils which happen to be most strongly presented to their minds. Some

[Ch. 53. on the Dangerous Prevalence of Imagination.-ED.]

have fancied themselves to be deprived of the use of their limbs, some to labour under acute diseases, others to be in extreme poverty; when, in truth, there was not the least reality in any of the suppositions; so that when the vapours were dispelled, they were convinced of the delusion. To Johnson, whose supreme enjoyment was the exercise of his reason, the disturbance or obscuration of that faculty was the evil most to be dreaded. Insanity, therefore, was the object of his most dismal apprehension; and he fancied himself seized by it, or approaching to it, at the very time when he was giving proofs of a more than ordinary soundness and vigour of judgement. That his own diseased imagination should have so far deceived him is strange; but it is stranger still that some of his friends should have given credit to his groundless opinion, when they had such undoubted proofs that it was totally fallacious; though it is by no means surprising that those who wish to depreciate him should, since his death, have laid hold of this circumstance, and insisted upon it with very unfair aggravation 1.

Amidst the oppression and distraction of a disease which very few have felt in its full extent, but many have experienced in a lighter degree, Johnson, in his writings, and in his conversation, never failed to display all the varieties of intellectual excellence. In his march through this world to a better, his mind

1

[This, it is to be presumed, was Boswell's reason for concealing that passage of Mr. Hector's paper which is restored in p. 24; but Johnson himself was not so scrupulous. He says, in a letter to Dr. Warton (which will be found under 24 Dec. 1754), "Poor dear Collins! I have been often near his state, and therefore have it in great commiseration." It is wonderful, that Boswell does not see the inconsistency of blaming others for repeating what Johnson himself frequently avowed, and what Boswell himself first told the world. See ante, p. 3.-ED.]

2 [Mr. Boswell himself, as will be seen by his own complaints, and as was well known to his friends, was himself occasionally afflicted with this morbid depression of spirits, and was, at intervals, equally liable to paroxysms of what may be called morbid vivacity. He wrote, as Mr. D'Israeli observes, a Series of Essays in the London Magazine, under the title of the "Hypochondriac," commencing in 1777, and carried on till 1782.-ED.]

still appeared grand and brilliant, and impressed all around him with the truth of Virgil's noble sentiment- ·

"Igneus est ollis vigor et cælestis origo."

The history of his mind as to religion is an important article. I have mentioned the early impressions made upon his tender imagination by his mother, who continued her pious cares with assiduity, but, in his opinion, not with judgement. "Sunday (said he) was a heavy day to me when I was a boy. My mother confined me on that day, and made me read 'The Whole Duty of Man,' from a great part of which I could derive no instruction. When, for instance, I had read the chapter on theft, which from my infancy I had been taught was wrong, I was no more convinced that theft was wrong than before; so there was no accession of knowledge. A boy should be introduced to such books, by having his attention directed to the arrangement, to the style, and other excellencies of composition; that the mind being thus engaged by an amusing variety of objects may not grow weary."

He communicated to me the following particulars upon the subject of his religious progress. "I fell into an inattention to religion, or an indifference about it, in my ninth year. The church at Lichfield, in which we had a seat, wanted reparation, so I was to go and find a seat in other churches; and having bad eyes, and being awkward about this, I used to go and read in the fields on Sunday. This habit continued till my fourteenth year; and still I find a great reluctance to go to church. I then became a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did not much think against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford, where it would not be suffered. When at Oxford, I took up Law's Serious Call to a Holy

Life,' expecting to find it a dull book (as such books generally are), and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion, after I became capable of rational inquiry'." From this time forward religion was the predominant object of his thoughts; though, with the just sentiments of a conscientious Christian, he lamented that his practice of its duties fell far short of what it ought to be.

This instance of a mind such as that of Johnson being first disposed, by an unexpected incident, to think with anxiety of the momentous concerns of eternity, and of "what he should do to be saved," may for ever be produced in opposition to the superficial and sometimes profane contempt that has been thrown upon those occasional impressions which it is certain many Christians have experienced; though it must be acknowledged that weak minds, from an erroneous supposition, that no man is in a state of grace who has not felt a particular conversion, have, in some cases, brought a degree of ridicule upon them; a ridicule, of which it is inconsiderate or unfair to make a general application.

How seriously Johnson was impressed with a sense of religion, even in the vigour of his youth, appears from the following passage in his minutes kept by way of diary:

"Sept. 7, 1736. I have this day entered upon my 28th year.

[Mr. Boswell here adds a note, complaining that Mrs. Piozzi had, in her Anecdotes, misrepresented this matter: the misrepresentation, after all, is not great, and the editor therefore omits a long controversial note-ED.]

2 [This Boswell has borrowed, without acknowledgement, from Sir J. Hawkins (p. 163). But it is to be observed, that after a prayer on his birthday in 1738, Johnson (on transcribing it in 1768) adds, "This is the first solemn prayer of which I have a copy; whether I composed any before this, I question." Pr. and Med. p. 3. He had either forgotten the prayer of 1736, or considered it only an occasional ejaculation, and not a solemn prayer. But serious and pious meditations and resolutions had been early familiar to his mind. He writes, in 1764, that "from almost the earliest time that he could remember, he had been forming schemes for a better life." Pr. and Med. p. 57. -ED.]