Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1885 — Samuel Johnson. [ARTICLE]

Samuel Johnson.

It id 100 years ago since Dr. Johnson ■wrote his last letter to Lucy Porter, in which he announced to her that he was very ill, and that he desired her prayers. Less than a fortnight latter, on the 13th of Deoember, 1784, he died. All through the year his -condition had, given his friends more than anxiety. The winter of 1783 had been marked by collapse of the constitution; to the ceaseless misery of his skin was now added an asthma that would not suffer him to recline in bed, a dropsy that made his legs and feet useless through half of the weary day. It is somewhat marvelous that he got through this terrible winter, the sufferings of which are painfully recorded in his sad correspondence. It is difficult to.understand why, just when he wanted companionship most, his friends seem all to have happened to desert him. Of the quaint group of invalids in mind and body, to whom his hduse had been a hospital, all were gone except Mrs. Desmoulins, who was bedridden; and we may believe that their wrangling company had never been so distasteful to himself as to his friends. Boswell and Mrs. Thrale, as we know, had more or less valid reasons for absence, and Boswell, at least, was solicitous in inquiry. We must, however, from whatever cause, think of Johnson, who dreaded solitude, as now almost always alone, mortified by spiritual pains no less acute than his physical ones, torfeuring his wretched nights with Baxter’s “Call to the Unconverted,” and with laborious and repeated diagnosis of his own bodily symptoms. It is strange to think that although he was the leading man of letters in England, and the center of a whole society, his absence from the meetings of his associates seems scarcely to have been noticed. It was not until in February, when he was relieved, that lie allowed himself to speak of the danger he had passed through. Then he confessed his terror to Lucy Porter, in the famous words, “Pray for me; death, my dear, is very dreadful; let us think nothing worth our care but how to prepare for it, ” and asked Boswell to consult the venerable physician, Sir Alexander Dick, as to the best way of avoiding a relapse. Boswell felt it a duty to apply not to Dick only but to various leading doctors. In doing so he reminded them, with his extraordinary foppishness, of “the elegant compliment” which Johnson had paid to their profession in his “Life of Garth,” the poet-physician. The doctors with one accord, and thinking without doubt far more of Johnson himself than of Garth, clustered around him with their advice and their prescriptions, and the great man certainly received for the brief remainder of his days such alleviation as syrup of poppies and vinegar of squills could give him. Mrs. Boswell, encouraged by a more favorable account of his health, invited him down to Auchinlech in March. He could not venture to accept, but he was pleased to be asked, and recovered so much of his wonted fire as to fancy, in a freak of strange inconsistency, that he would amuse himself by decorating his London study with the heads of “the fathers of Scottish literature. ” To Langton,' who—as Johnson justly thought, with unaccountable “circumduction” had made inquiries about his old friend . through Lord Portmore, he expressed a hope of panting on to ninety, and said that “God, who has so wonderfully restored me, can preserve me in all seasons. ” It is very pathetic to follow the old man through the desolate and wearisome months; nor can we easily understand, from any of the records we possess, why he was allowed to be so much alone. On Easter Monday, after recording without petulance that his great hope or being able to go out on the preceding day had been doomed to disappointment, he goes on to say, “I want every comfort. My life is very solitary and very cheerless. * * * I am very weak, and have not passed the door since the 13th of December.”— The Fortnightly Review.