��difficulty of breathing, the other from paralytic debility. To give and receive medical counsel therefore, they fairly sate down on each side a table in the Doctor's gloomy apartment, adorned with skeletons, preserved monsters, &c. and agreed to write Latin billets to each other J . Such a scene did I never see ! ' You (said Johnson) are timidb a.ndgelid* ;' finding that his friend had prescribed palliative not drastic remedies. It is not me, replies poor Lawrence in an interrupted voice ; 'tis nature that is gelidt and timid. In fact he lived but few months after I believe, and retained his faculties still a shorter time. He was a man of strict piety and profound learning, but little skilled in the knowledge of life or manners, and died without having ever enjoyed the reputation he so justly deserved 3 .
Mr. Johnson's health had been always extremely bad since / 1 first knew him, and his over-anxious care to retain without \ blemish the perfect sanity of his mind, contributed much to dis turb it 4 . He had studied medicine diligently in all its branches 5 ; but had given particular attention to the diseases of the imagina-
- tion, which he watched in himself with a solicitude destructive
vof his own peace, and intolerable to those he trusted 6 . Dr. Law rence told him one day, that if he would come and beat him once a week he would bear it ; but to hear his complaints was more than man could support 7 . 'Twas therefore that he tried,
1 See Life, iv. 143 for one of these See also ib. iii. 22, and Letters, \. 49. letters. 6 See ante, p. 48, where he re-
2 Johnson could not have said, cords: 'This day it came into my ' You are timide and gelide! On his mind to write the history of my death-bed he reproached Heberden melancholy.' I believe that there is with being timidorum timidissimus. great exaggeration in Mrs. Piozzi's Ib, iv. 400,* n. statement.
3 Hawkins, who speaks highly of 7 ' I never knew any man who was his skill, says that 'a vacuity of less disposed to be querulous than countenance very unfavourable to an Johnson. Whether the subject was opinion of his learning or sagacity his own situation, or the state of the stood in his way.' Hawkins's John- publick, or the state of human nature son, p. 402. in general, though he saw the evils,
4 Ante, p. 78, and post, p. 234. his mind was turned to resolution,
5 ' He was a great dabbler in and never to whining or complaint.' physic,' writes Boswell. Life, iii. 152. Life, ii. 357.
I suppose,
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