Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/227

 Anecdotes.

��me from expecting to find any action of which both the original motive and all the parts were good V

The piety of Dr. Johnson was exemplary and edifying: he was punctiliously exact to perform every public duty enjoined by the church 2, and his spirit of devotion had an energy that affected all who ever saw him pray in private. The coldest and most languid hearers of the word must have felt themselves animated by his manner of reading the holy scriptures 3 ; and to pray by his sick bed, required strength of body as well as of mind, so vehement were his manners, and his tones of voice so pathetic 4. I have many times made it my request to heaven that I might be spared the sight of his death ; and I was spared it 5 !

Mr. Johnson, though in general a gross feeder, kept fast in Lent 6, particularly the holy week, with a rigour very dangerous to his general health ; but though he had left off wine (for religious motives as I always believed, though he did not own it 7 ), yet he did not hold the commutation of offences by voluntary penance, or encourage others to practise severity upon themselves 8. He

��1 Perhaps Mrs. Piozzi has in mind the following saying of Johnson's at Bath, where he was staying with her and Mr. Thrale : ' To act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite beings. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive.' Life, iii. 48.

2 Except the duty of going regu larly to church and of receiving the sacrament at least three times a year. Ante, pp. 8 1, 92. It is likely however that on the Sundays that he passed at Streatham he was made regular by the regularity of the family.

3 ' His recitation was grand and affecting.' Life, v. 115.

4 Ib. iv. 409.

5 She was spared it by deserting him. Eighteen months before his death, when attacked by palsy, he wrote to her : ' Let not all our en dearments be forgotten, but let me

VOL. I.

��have in this great distress your pity and your prayers. You see I yet turn to you with my complaints as a settled and unalienable friend ; do not, do not drive me from you, for I have not deserved either neglect or hatred.' Letters, ii. 303.

6 There is nothing besides this statement to show that he fasted in any part of Lent but Passion Week.

7 ' I can't drink a little,' he said to Hannah More, 'and therefore I never touch it.' Hannah More's Memoirs, i. 251. He gave the same account to Boswell. Life, ii. 435. Religious motives had nothing to do with it. He did not disapprove of the use of wine by those who could be moderate. Ib. i. 103, n. 3. 'I hope you per severe in drinking,' he wrote to Dr. Taylor. Letters, i. 408.

8 ' Austerities and mortifications are means by which the mind is

P even

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