1 6 JOHNSON. 



eminence as an author in several of its provinces, while 

 his mother was on her death-bed, he had to borrow 

 of his printer six of the twelve guineas he sent to supply 

 her pressing wants ; and in the evenings of the week 

 after her decease, he wrote his 'Rasselas,' in order to defray 

 the expenses of her funeral and discharge a few debts 

 which she had left. He received a hundred pounds 

 for it. 



Nor must it be forgotten that to these miseries, the 

 general lot of the literary man's life, was added in John- 

 son's the far worse suffering from his constitutional com- 

 plaint, a suffering bad enough in itself if the companion 

 of ease and of affluence, but altogether intolerable when 

 it weighs down the spirits and the faculties of him whose 

 mental labour must contribute to the supply of his bodily 

 wants. The exertion, no doubt, when once made, is the 

 best medicine for the disease ; but it is the peculiar 

 operation of the disease to render all such exertion pain- 

 ful in the extreme, to make the mind recoil from it, and 

 render the intellectual powers both torpid and sluggish, 

 when a painful effort has put them in motion. I speak 

 with some confidence on a subject which accident has 

 enabled me to study in the case of one with whom I was 

 well acquainted for many years ; and who either outlived 

 the malady, which in him was hereditary, or obtained a 

 power over it by constant watchfulness, diligent care, and 

 a fixed resolution to conquer it. As in Johnson's case, it 

 was remittent, but also periodical, a thing not mentioned 

 of Johnson's ; for in my friend's case it recurred at inter- 

 vals, first of six months, then of a year, afterwards of two 

 and three years, until it ceased ; and the duration of the 

 attack was never more than of eight or ten months. It 



