Hesperia's plant, in some less skilful hands, The "morbid melancholy," which was lurking in his constitution, and to which we may ascribe those particularities, and that aversion to regular life, which, at a very early period, marked his character, gathered such strength in his twentieth year, as to afflict him in a dreadful manner. While he was at Lichfield, in the college vacation of the year 1729', he felt himself overwhelmed with a horrible hypochondria, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery. From this dismal malady he never afterwards was perfectly relieved; and all his labours, and all his enjoyments, were but temporary interruptions of its baleful influence. How wonderful, how unsearchable are the ways of GOD! Johnson, who was blest with all the powers of genius and understanding in a degree far above the ordinary state of human nature, was at the same time visited with a disorder so afflictive, that they who know it by dire experience, will not envy his exalted endowments. That it was, in some degree, occasioned by a defect in his nervous system, that inexplicable part of our frame, appears highly probable. He told Mr. Paradise that he was sometimes so languid and in [It seems, as Dr. Hall suggests, probable, that this is a mistake for 1730: Johnson appears to have remained in college during the vacation of 1729, and we have no trace of him in the year 1730, during which he was, possibly, labouring under this malady, and, on that account, absent from college.-ED.] 2 [John Paradise, Esq. D. C. L. of Oxford, and F. R. S., was of Greek extraction, the son of the English Consul at Salonica, where he was born: he was educated at Padua, but resided the greater part of his life in London; in the literary circles of which he was generally known and highly esteemed. He seems to have been a good classical scholar, and certainly spoke most 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 exertions'. 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 Jones, 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.] [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.] 2 [See ante, p. 15.—ED.] 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 '. Amidst the oppression and distraction of a disease which very few have felt in its full extent, but many 2 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 [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.] [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." 66 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 |