of imagination, and force of language, would probably have produced something sublime upon the gunpowder plot. To apologize for his neglect, he gave in a short copy of verses, entitled Somnium, containing a common thought; "that the muse had come to him in his sleep, and whispered, that it did not become him to write on such subjects as politicks; he should confine himself to humbler themes:" but the versification was truly Virgilian. He had a love and respect for Jorden, not for his literature, but for his worth: "Whenever," said he, "a young man becomes Jorden's pupil, he becomes his son." Having given such a specimen of his poetical powers, he was asked by Mr. Jorden, to translate Pope's Messiah into Latin verse, as a Christmas exercise. He performed it with uncommon rapidity, and in so masterly a manner, that he obtained great applause from it, which ever after kept him high in the estimation of his college, and, indeed, of all the university. It is said, that Mr. Pope expressed himself concerning it in terms of strong approbation. Dr. Taylor told me, that it was first printed for old Mr. Johnson, without the knowledge of his son, who was very angry when he heard of it. A Miscellany of Poems collected by a person of the name of Husbands, was published at Oxford in 1731. In that miscellany Johnson's translation of the Messiah appeared, with this modest motto from Scaliger's Poeticks, Ex alieno ingenio poeta, ex suo tantum versificator1. I am not ignorant that critical objections have been made to this and other specimens of Johnson's Latin poetry.. I acknowledge myself not competent to decide on a question of such extreme nicety. But I am satisfied with the just and discriminative eulogy pronounced upon it by my friend Mr. Courtenay: And with like ease his vivid lines assume 1 It appeared, with his name, in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1752, p. 184. From playful Ovid cull the tinsel phrase, And with a Roman's ardour think and write. 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 an 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 m Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of Dr. Johnson, by John Courtenay, esq. M. P. VOL. I. D 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 inefficient, 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. 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 judgment". 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 judgment is sound, and a disorder by which the judgment 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." 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 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 ■Boswell's psychological knowledge is not displayed in this remark. Some faculties of the mind appear to be strengthened by the extinction of others; as we perceive the taste and touch to be more exquisitely enjoyed by the blind than by those who have the use of all their senses. Men of deranged intellects will reason, on every subject that is not connected with the immediate seat of their disorder, with a luminous acuteness that casts the mental powers of other men into shade. See Lord Erskine's speech on insanity for some very precise and admirable rules on this point. Don Quixote, and the philosopher in the forty-fourth chapter of Rasselas, illustrate our position. Dr. Willis's definition is given in a note to the abovementioned chapter in Rasselas, vol. i. p. 293. Oxford edition of Johnson's works. An incessant dread of insanity, in one form or other, was that single idea to the despotism of which, to adopt the language of De Staël, Johnson's otherwise powerful mind was always and entirely enslaved.-Ev. 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 judgment. 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 have experienced in a slighter 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 still appeared grand and brilliant, and impressed all around him with the truth of Virgil's noble sentiment Igneus est ollis vigor et cœlestis 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 judgment. 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 |