cate if already fixed there; namely, that madness was to be the termination of his disease. Was this doctor simple enough to imagine, that there is any thing in genius which renders the intellect better able to support prospective evil, or the undisguised prognosis of a fearful malady, than the humble faculties of an ordinary mind? Simple indeed he would be to think so, and little acquainted with human nature.

But the error, we well know, is daily commit-, ted by the inexperienced, of supposing that literary men are possessed of strength of mind that may enable them to rise superior to the fears and apprehensions of the common invalid, and, consequently, that all reserve is to be laid aside, and the real condition of such patients freely and fearlessly exhibited to their view. This is a great mistake the most powerful talents are generally united with the acutest sensibility, and in dealing with such cases the considerate physician has to encourage, and not to depress, the invalid: to temper candour with delicacy; and firmness above all things, with gentleness of manner, and even kindness of heart. If it be essential in one disease more than another for the physician to command the confidence of his patient, to engage his respect, and to convince him of the personal

interest that is taken in his health and well-beingthat disease is morbid melancholy.

Johnson was wont to tell his friends, that he inherited "a vile melancholy" from his father, which made him "mad all his life-or, at least, not sober." Insanity was the constant terror of his life; the opinion of Dr. Swinfen haunted him like a spirit of evil wherever he went; and at the very period, as Boswell observes, when he was giving the world proofs of no ordinary vigour of understanding, he actually fancied himself insane, or in a state, as nearly as possible, approaching to it.

Johnson's malady and Cowper's were precisely similar in the early period of each, as we have before remarked; the only difference was in the strength of mind of either sufferer. Cowper at once surrendered himself up to the tyranny of his disorder, and took a pleasure in parading the chains of his melancholy before the eyes of his correspondents, even when "immuring himself at home in the infected atmosphere of his own enthusiasm ;" while Johnson struggled with his disease, sometimes indeed in a spirit of ferocious independence, and very seldom complained to his most intimate friends of his "humiliating malady." In no point was the vigour of his intellect shown in so strong a light as in this

particular; for in no malady is there so great a disposition to complain of the sufferings that are endured, and to over-state their intensity, lest, by any possibility, they should be underrated by others.

CHAPTER XVIII.

JOHNSON CONTINUED.

JOHNSON's disorder (if we may be allowed the expression) had three phases, the character of each of which distinghished a particular period of his career, or rather predominated at a particular period, for it cannot be said that the hues of each were not occasionally blended. At twenty, however, his despondency was of a religious kind: about forty-five "his melancholy was at its meridian," and then had the shape of a fierce irritability, venting itself in irascibility of temper, and fits of capricious arrogance.

At the full period of "three-score years and ten," the leading symptom of his hypochondria was "the apprehension of death, and every day appeared to aggravate his terrors of the grave." This was "the black dog" that worried him to the last moment. Metastasio, we are told, never permitted the word death to be pronounced in his presence; and Johnson was so agitated by having the subject spoken of in his hearing, that on one

occasion he insulted Boswell for introducing the topic; and in the words of the latter, he had put "his head into the lion's mouth a great many times with comparative safety, but at last had it bitten off."

"For many years before his death," says Arthur Murphy, "so terrible was the prospect of death, that when he was not disposed to enter into the conversation that was going forward, whoever sat near his chair might hear him repeating those lines of Shakspeare

"To die and go we know not where."

He acknowledged to Boswell he never had a moment in which death was not terrible to him; and even at the age of sixty-nine he says he had made no approaches to a state in which he could look upon death without terror.

At seventy-five, we find him writing to his friends to consult all the eminent physicians of their acquaintance of his case. To his kind and excellent physician, Dr. Brocklesby, he writes, "I am loathe to think that I grow worse, but cannot prove to my own partiality that I grow much better. Pray be so kind as to have me in your thoughts, and mention my case to others as you have opportunity." Boswell, at the same time, in Scotland, was employed in consulting the most