ould not distinguish the hour upon the town-clock.

Johnson, upon the first violent attack of this disorder, strove to
overcome it by forcible exertions. He frequently walked to Birmingham
and back again, and tried many other expedients, but all in vain. His
expression concerning it to me was 'I did not then know how to manage
it.' His distress became so intolerable, that he applied to Dr. Swinfen,
physician in Lichfield, his god-father, and put into his hands a state
of his case, written in Latin. Dr. Swinfen was so much struck with the
extraordinary acuteness, research, and eloquence of this paper, that in
his zeal for his godson he shewed it to several people. His daughter,
Mrs. Desmoulins, who was many years humanely supported in Dr. Johnson's
house in London, told me, that upon his discovering that Dr. Swinfen
had communicated his case, he was so much offended, that he was never
afterwards fully reconciled to him. He indeed had good reason to be
offended; for though Dr. Swinfen's motive was good, he inconsiderately
betrayed a matter deeply interesting and of great delicacy, which had
been entrusted to him in confidence; and exposed a complaint of his
young friend and patient, which, in the superficial opinion of the
generality of mankind, is attended with contempt and disgrace.

To Johnson, whose supreme enjoyment was the exercise of his reason,
the disturbance or obscuration of that faculty was the evil most to
be dreaded. Insanity, therefore, was the object of his most dismal
apprehension; and he fancied himself seized by it, or approaching to
it, at the very time when he was giving proofs of a more than ordinary
soundness and vigour of judgement. That his own diseased imagination
should have so far deceived him, is strange; but it is stranger still
that some of his friends should have given credit to his groundless
opinion, when they had such undoubted proofs that it was totally
fallacious; though it is by no means surprising that those who wish
to depreciate him, should, since his death, have laid hold of this
circumstance, and insisted upon it with very unfair aggravation.

The history of his mind as to religion is an important article. I have
mentioned the early impressions made upon his tender imagination by
his mother, who continued her pious care with assiduity, but, in his
opinion, not with judgement. 'Sunday (said he) was a heavy day to me
when I was a boy. My mother confined me on that day, and made me