Do not neglect, sir, yours affectionately, SAM. JOHNSON."


Was ever the last fear put into such simple and poignant words as
in the above letter? It is like that other saying of Johnson's,
when all sorts of good reasons had been given why men should wish
to be released from their troubles by death, "After all, it is a
sad thing for a man to lie down and die." There is no more that can
be said, and not the best reasons in the world for desiring to
depart and have done with life can ever do away with that sadness.

Dr. Johnson supplies the clearest proof, if proof were needed, that
no robustness of temperament, no genius of common sense, no array
of rationality, no degree of courage, can save a man from the
assaults of fear, and even of fear which the sufferer knows to be
unreal. Some of the most severe and angry things which Johnson ever
said were said to Boswell and others who persisted in discussing
the question of death. Yet Johnson had no rational doubt of
immortality, and believed with an almost childlike simplicity in
the Christian faith. He was not afraid of pain, or of the act of
dying; it was of the unknown conditions beyond the grave that he
was afraid. Probably as a rule very robust people are so much
occupied in living that they have little time to think of the
future, while men and women who hold to life by a frail tenure are
not much concerned at quitting a scene which is phantasmal and full
of pain. But in Johnson we have the two extremes brought together.
He was the most gregarious of men; he loved company so well that he
would follow his friends to the very threshold, in the hope, as he
once told Boswell, that they might perhaps return. When he was
alone and undistracted, his melancholy came back upon him like a