Ib. i. 343.
Jan. 1780. Once. Post, Jan. 20, 1780.
June 1780. Times not mentioned. Croker's Boswell, p. 649.
Jan. and Feb. 1782. Thrice. 50 ounces. Post, Feb. 4 and March 20, 1782.
May 1782. At least once. Post, under March 19, 1782, and Piozzi Letters, ii. 240.
Yet he wrote to Mrs. Thrale, 'I am of the chymical sect, which holds phlebotomy in abhorrence.' Ib. ii. 240. 'O why,' asks Wesley, who was as strongly opposed to bleeding as he was fond of poulticing, 'will physicians play with the lives of their patients? Do not others (as well as old Dr. Cockburn) know that "no end is answered by bleeding in a pleurisy, which may not be much better answered without it?"' Wesley's Journal, ii. 310. 'Dr. Cheyne,' writes Pope, 'was of Mr. Cheselden's opinion, that bleeding might be frequently repeated with safety, for he advised me to take four or five ounces every full moon.' Elwin and Courthope's Pope's Works, ix. 162.
[432] 'It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature.' Sir Thomas Browne quoted in Johnson's Works, vi. 485. See post, April 15, 1778, and Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 12, 1773.
[433] In the last number of The Idler Johnson says:--'There are few things not purely evil of which we can say without some emotion of uneasiness, this is the last.... The secret horrour of the last is inseparable from a thinking being whose life is limited, and to whom death is dreadful.'
[434] In the first edition for scarce any man we find almost no man. See ante, March 20, 1776, note.
[435] Bacon, in his Essay on Death, says:--'It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak but it mates and masters the fear of death; and therefore death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him, that can win the combat of him.' In the De Aug. Sci. vi. 3. 12, he says:--'Non invenias inter humanos affetum tam pusillum, qui si intendatur paullo vehementius, non mortis metum superet.'
[436] Johnson, in his Lives of Addison and Parnell (Works, vii. 399, 449), mentions that they drank too freely. See post, under Dec. 2, 1784.
[437] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. 3d edit. p. 240 [Sept. 22]. BOSWELL.
[438] In the Life of Addison (Works, vii. 444) he says:--'The necessity of complying with times, and of sparing persons, is the great impediment of biography. History may be formed from permanent monuments and records; but Lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost for ever. What is known can seldom be immediately told; and when it might be told, it is no longer known. The delicate features of the mind, the nice discriminations of character, and the minute peculiarities of conduct, are soon obliterated; and it is surely better that caprice, obstinacy, frolick and folly, however they might delight in the description, should be silently forgotten, than that, by wanton merriment and unseasonable detection, a pang should be given to a widow, a daughter, a brother, or a friend. As the process of these narratives is now bringing me among my contemporaries, I begin to feel myself "walking upon ashes under which the fire is not extinguished," and coming to the time of which it will be proper rather to say "nothing that is false, than all that is true."' See ante, i. 9, and 30.
[439] Dr. Taylor was very ready to make this admission, because the party with which he was connected was not in power. There was then some truth in it, owing to the pertinacity of factious clamour. Had he lived till now, it would have been impossible for him to deny that his Majesty possesses the warmest affection of his people. BOSWELL. See post, March 21, 1783.
[440] The Duke of York in 1788, speaking in the House of Lords on the King's illness, said:--'He was confident that his Royal Highness [the Prince of Wales] understood too well the sacred principles which seated the House of Brunswick on the throne of Great Britain ever to assume or exercise any power, be his claim what it might, not derived from the will of the people, expressed by their representatives, and their lordships in parliament assembled.' Parl. Hist. xxvii. 678.
[441] See ante, i. 430.
[442] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 18, 1773, and post, under date of Sept. 9, 1779, note.
[443] 'The return of my birth-day,' he wrote in 1773, 'if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.' Piozzi Letters, i. 134. In 1781 he viewed the day with calmness, if not with cheerfulness. He writes:--'I rose, breakfasted, and gave thanks at church for my creation, preservation and redemption. As I came home, I thought I had never begun any period of life so placidly. I have always been accustomed to let this day pass unnoticed, but it came this time into my mind that some little festivity was not improper. I had a dinner; and invited Allen and Levet.' Pr. and Med. p. 198. In 1783 he again had 'a little dinner,' and invited four friends to keep the day.