the solitude of his study; of Cowper's messenger, bearing the sentence of eternal reprobation; of Tasso's spirits gliding on a sunbeam; of Mozart's "man in black," the harbinger of death, who visited his dwelling a few days before his decease; and of Johnson's belief in the existence of ghosts, and the ministering agency of departed spirits. His sentiments on these subjects, though expressed in a work of fiction, are well known to have been his deliberate opinion. "That the dead are seen no more I will not undertake to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages and of all nations. There are no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related or believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth."

This is the language of the hypochondriac, not of the moralist, who in the exercise of a sober judgment must have known that the concurrent testimony of all experience and philosophy was opposed to the opinion that those who are once buried are seen again in this world.

There are many of what are called the peculiarities of Johnson's superstition, which excite surprise, but are not generally known to be the characteristic symptoms of hypochondria. "He

had one peculiarity," says Boswell, "of which none of his friends ever ventured to ask an explanation. This was an anxious care to go out or in at a door, or passage, by a certain number of steps from a certain point, so as that either his right or left foot, I forget which, should constantly make the first actual movement. Thus, upon innumerable occasions I have seen him suddenly stop, and then seem to count his steps with deep earnestness, and when he had neglected, or gone wrong, in this sort of magical movement, I have seen him go back again, put himself in a proper posture to begin the ceremony, and having gone through it, break from his abstraction, walk briskly on, and join his companion."- "Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed him go a long way about rather than cross a particular alley." His piety, we are told by Murphy, in some instances bordered on superstition, that he thought it not more strange that there should be evil spirits than evil men; and even that the question of second sight held him in suspense. He was likewise in the habit of imposing on himself voluntary penance for every little defect, going through the day with only one cup of tea without milk, and at other time abstaining from animal food. He appears likewise to have had a superstitious notion of the efficacy of repeating a detached sentence of a

prayer over and over, somewhat in the manner of a Turkish devotee, who limits himself daily to the repetition of a particular verse of the Koran. "His friend, Mr. Davies," says Boswell, "of whom Churchill says, that Davies hath a very pretty wife,' when Johnson began his repetition of 'lead us not into temptation,' used to whisper Mrs. Davies, 'you, my dear, are the cause of this."'" Many of these habits, however, if they were weaknesses, were the weaknesses of a pious and a good man, and were the result of early religious impressions, instilled into his mind by his mother "with assiduity," but, in his opinion, "not with judgment." Sunday, he said, was a heavy day to him: when he was a boy he was confined on that day to the perusal of the Whole Duty of Man, from a great part of which he could derive no instruction. "A boy," he says, "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." Be this as it may, his superstitious notions and observances were encouraged, if not caused, by his disease.

CHAPTER XIX.

JOHNSON CONTINUED.

THE indefatigable Burton has ransacked all medical authorities, ancient and modern, for the symptoms of hypochondria; and amongst those he has enumerated there is not one of Johson's miscalled peculiarities, which is not to be found. "Many of these melancholy men," says Burton, "are sad, and not fearful-some fearful and not sad."

(Johnson, for instance, groaning in his chamber, as Dr. Adams found him, and at another period knocking down a bookseller in his own shop.) "Some fear death, and yet, in a contrary humour, make away with themselves." (Johnson, indeed, did not commit suicide, but his fear of death was never surpassed.) "Others are troubled with scruples of conscience, distrusting God's mercies, thinking the devil will have them, and making great lamentations." (Similar qualms and apprehensions harassed the doctor to his latest hour.) "One

durst not walk alone from home for fear he should swoon or die." (The terror of such an occur

rence probably contributed to confine the great moralist for so many years to his beloved Fleet Street.) "A second fears all old women as witches, and every black dog or cat he sees he suspecteth to be a devil." (Whether he believed in the witchery of old women or young, we know not, but he was unwilling, however to deny their power, and the black dog that worried him at home was the demon of hypochondria.) "A third dares not go over a bridge, or come near a pool, rock, or steep hill." (Johnson dared not pass a particular alley in Leicester Square.) "The terror of some particular death troubles others--they are troubled in mind as if they had committed a murder." (The constant dread of insanity we have already noticed, and the constructions put on his expressions of remorse by Sir John Hawkins.) "Some

look as if they had just come out of the den of Trophonius, and though they laugh many times, and look extraordinary merry yet are they extremely lumpish again in a minute; dull and heavy, semel et simul, sad and merry, but most part sad." (The den of Trophonius was his gloomy abode in Bolt Court, whence he sallied forth at night-fall, on his visit to the Mitre, and the gaiety and gloom have a parallel in the state of his spirits when at the university, such as extorted the melancholy denial to Dr. Adams of having been "a gay and frolic