1 8 JOHNSON. 



to undermine the disease, and each effort rendered the 

 succeeding one less difficult. But before he became so 

 well acquainted with the cure, and made little or no 

 exertion, passing the time in reading only, the recovery 

 took place nearly in the same manner as afterwards 

 under a more severe regimen, only that he has told me 

 that to this regimen he ascribed his ultimate cure after 

 obtaining a constantly increasing prolongation of the 

 healthy intervals. The recovery of the mind's tone 

 always took place in the reverse order to the loss of it ; 

 first the power returned before the will ; or the faculties 

 were restored to their vigour, before the desire of exerting 

 them had come back. It is much to be lamented that 

 no one examined Dr. Johnson more minutely respecting his 

 complaint ; for he never showed any disposition to conceal 

 the particulars of it. The sad experience which he had of 

 its effects appears frequently to have been in his thoughts 

 when writing; and it can, I conceive, be more parti- 

 cularly traced in his account of Collins,""" whose disease 

 became so greatly aggravated that he was placed under 

 restraint. The malady in Johnson appears never to have 

 reached to so great a height as in the case of Collins; 

 and indeed of Sir Isaac Newton, who was also subject to 

 it, and whose faculties at one period of his illustrious life 

 it entirely clouded over.f Chance having thrown in my 



* See ' Lives of the Poets/ vol. iv. 



t Some controversy has arisen on this subject, occasioned by M. 

 Biot's statement, (in his Biography of Newton,) taken from 

 Huyghens, who had it from Collins. There is also a partial con- 

 firmation in Abraham de la Pryne's ' Diary,' and in Babington's 

 ' Letters.' -But I found among Locke's papers twenty years ago, a 

 letter which seems to leave no doubt on the subject. Newton had 

 written a letter to Locke, accusing himself (Newton) of having 



