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 read
"The Whole Duty of Man," from a great part of which I could derive no
instruction. When, for instance, I had read the chapter on theft, which
from my infancy I had been taught was wrong, I was no more convinced
that theft was wrong than before; so there was no accession of