s, in whom popular imagination fancies it sees
the man of letters. No man was ever more fearless of {114} pain than
Johnson. The only thing he was afraid of was death. Of the extent and
even violence of that fear in him till within a few days of the actual
event, the evidence, in spite of what Sir Walter Raleigh has said, is
conclusive and overwhelming. It comes from every one who knew him.
But that was a moral and intellectual fear. Of physical fear he knew
nothing. The knife of the surgeon had terrors then which our
generation has happily forgotten. But it had none for Johnson. When
he lay dying his only fear was that his doctors, one of whom he called
"timidorum timidissimus," would spare him pain which if inflicted might
have prolonged his life. He called to them to cut deeper when they
were operating, and finally took the knife into his own hands and did
for himself what he thought the surgeon had failed to do. "I will be
conquered, I will not capitulate," were his words: and he acted on them
till the very last days were come.

Nor was this courage merely desperation in the presence of the great
Terror. He was as brave in health as in illness. He was perfectly
quiet and unconcerned during a dangerous storm between Skye and Mull;
and on being told that it was doubtful whether they would make for Mull
or Col cheerfully replied, "Col for my money." Roads in {115} those
days were not what they are now: but he never would admit that
accidents could happen and pooh-poohed them when they did. Nor was his
courage merely passive. Beauclerk did not find it so when at his
country house he saw Johnson go up to two large dogs which were
fighting and beat them till they stopped: nor did Langton when he
warned Johnson against a dangerous pool where they were bathing, only
to see Johnson swim straight into it; nor did the four ruffians who
once attacked him in the street and were surprised to find him more
than a match for the four of them. Whoever trifled with him was apt to
learn sooner than he wished that _nemo me impune lacessit_ was a saying
which was to be taken very literally from Johnson's mouth. Garrick
used to tell a story of a man who took a chair which had been placed
for Johnson at the Lichfield theatre and refused to give it up when
asked, upon which Johnson simply tossed man and chair together into the
pit. He proposed to treat Foote, the comic actor, in much the same
way. Hearing of Foote's inten