d
crimes, unknown distresses, and even death itself, however, daily
occurring in less liberal governments and less free nations, soon teach
one to content oneself with such petty grievances, and make one
acknowledge that the undistinguishing severity of newspaper abuse may in
some measure diminish the diffusion of vice and folly in Great Britain,
and while they fright delicate minds into forced refinements and affected
insipidity, they are useful to the great causes of virtue in the soul and
liberty in the State; and though sensibility often sinks under the
roughness of their prescriptions, it would be no good policy to take away
their licence.

Knowing the state of Mr. Johnson's nerves, and how easily they were
affected, I forbore reading in a new magazine, one day, the death of a
Samuel Johnson who expired that month; but my companion snatching up the
book, saw it himself, and contrary to my expectation, "Oh!" said he, "I
hope Death will now be glutted with Sam Johnsons, and let me alone for
some time to come; I read of another namesake's departure last week."
Though Mr. Johnson was commonly affected even to agony at the thoughts of
a friend's dying, he troubled himself very little with the complaints
they might make to him about ill-health. "Dear Doctor," said he one day
to a common acquaintance, who lamented the tender state of his _inside_,
"do not be like the spider, man, and spin conversation thus incessantly
out of thy own bowels." I told him of another friend who suffered
grievously with the gout. "He will live a vast many years for all that,"
replied he, "and then what signifies how much he suffers! But he will
die at last, poor fellow; there's the misery; gout seldom takes the fort
by a coup-de-main, but turning the siege into a blockade, obliges it to
surrender at discretion."

A lady he thought well of was disordered in her health. "What help has
she called in?" inquired Johnson. "Dr. James, sir," was the reply. "What
is her disease?" "Oh, nothing positive; rather a gradual and gentle
decline." "She will die, then, pretty dear!" answered he. "When Death's
pale horse runs away with a person on full speed, an active physician may
possibly give them a turn; but if he carries them on an even, slow pace,
down-hill, too! no care nor skill can save them!"

When Garrick was on his last sick-bed, no arguments, or recitals of such
facts as I had heard, would persuade Mr. Johnson of his danger. He had
pr