��Anecdotes.
��able with regard to others, he had formed vain hopes of perform ing impossibilities himself; and finding his good works ever below his desires and intent, filled his imagination with fears that he should never obtain forgiveness for omissions of duty and criminal waste of time 1 . These ideas kept him in constant anxiety concerning his salvation ; and the vehement petitions he perpetually made for a longer continuance on earth, were doubtless the cause of his so prolonged existence ; for when I carried Dr. Pepys to him in the year 1782, it appeared wholly impossible for any skill of the physician or any strength of the patient to save him. He was saved that time however by Sir Lucas's prescriptions ; and less skill on one side, or less strength on the other, I am morally certain, would not have been enough 2 . He had however possessed an athletic constitution, as he said the man who dipped people in the sea at Brighthelmstone acknowledged; for seeing Mr. Johnson swim 3 in the year 1766, Why Sir (says the dipper), you must have been a stout-hearted gentleman forty years ago.
Mr. Thrale and he used to laugh about that story very often : but Garrick told a better, for he said that in their young days, when some strolling players came to Litchfield, our friend had fixed his place upon the stage, and got himself a chair accord ingly ; which leaving for a few minutes, he found a man in it at his return, who refused to give it back at the first intreaty : Mr. Johnson however, who did not think it worth his while to make a second, took chair and man and all together, and threw them all at once into the pit. I asked the Doctor if this was a fact ? ' Garrick has not spoiled it in the telling (said he), it is very near true to be sure V
Mr. Beauclerc too related one day, how on some occasion he ordered two large mastiffs into his parlour, to shew a friend who
��1 Life, iv. 299.
2 According to Mrs. Piozzi, it was only by his petitions to heaven that his life was prolonged, for no thing but Sir Lucas Pepys's skill and
��his own strength saved his life in 1782.
3 Life, ii. 299 ; iii. 92, n. i.
4 Garrick gave much the same ac count to Boswell. Ib. ii. 299.
was
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