and indolence. But indolence was the time of danger : it was then that his spirits, not employed abroad, turned with inward hostility against himself 1 . His reflections on his own life and conduct were always severe ; and, wishing to be immaculate, he destroyed his own peace by unnecessary scruples. He tells us, that when he surveyed his past life, he discovered nothing but a barren waste of time, with some disorders of body, and disturbances of mind, very near to madness 2 . His life, he says, from his earliest years, was wasted in a morning bed 3 ; and his reigning sin was a general sluggishness, to which he was always inclined, and, in part of his life, almost compelled, by morbid melancholy, and weariness of mind. This was his constitutional malady, derived, perhaps, from his father, who was, at times, overcast with a gloom that bordered on insanity 4 . When to this it is added, that Johnson, about the age of twenty, drew up a description of his infirmities, for Dr. Swinfen, at that time an eminent physician in Staffordshire ; and received an answer to his letter, importing, that the symptoms indicated a future privation of reason 5 ; who can wonder that he was troubled with melancholy and dejection of spirit? An apprehension of the worst calamity that can befal human nature hung over him all the rest of his life, like the sword of the tyrant suspended over his guest. In his sixtieth year he had a mind to write the history of his melancholy ; but he desisted, not knowing whether it would not too much disturb him 6 . In a Latin poem, however, to which he has prefixed as a title, TiNil! 2EATTON, he has left a picture, of himself, drawn with as much truth, and as firm a hand, as can be seen in the portraits of Hogarth or Sir Joshua Reynolds. The learned reader will find the original poem in
1 Hawkins, p. 350. men."' Life, v. 215.
2 Ante, p. 78. 5 Murphy improves on Hawkins,
3 Ante, p. 72. who says (p. 288) that the physician
4 '"1 inherited, (said he,) a vile said that 'he could think nothing melancholy from my father, which better of his disorder than that it has made me mad all my life, at had a tendency to insanity; and least not sober." Lady M'Leod won- without great care might possibly dered he should tell this. " Madam, terminate in the deprivation of his (said I,) he knows that with that rational faculties.' See Life, i. 64. madness he is superior to other 6 Ante, p. 48.
this
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