��Anecdotes.
��difficulty of hearing. On this account he wished to travel all over the world x ; for the very act of going forward was delightful to him, and he gave himself no concern about accidents, which he said never happened : nor did the running-away of the horses on the edge of a precipice between Vernon and St. Denys in France 2 convince him to the contrary ; ' for nothing came of it (he said), except that Mr. Thrale leaped out of the carriage into a chalk-pit, and then came up again, looking as white ! ' When the truth was, all their lives were saved by the greatest providence ever exerted in favour of three human creatures ; and the part Mr. Thrale took from desperation was the likeliest thing in the world to produce broken limbs and death.
Fear was indeed a sensation to which Mr. Johnson was an utter stranger, excepting when some sudden apprehensions seized him that he was going to die 3 ; and even then he kept all his wits about him, to express the most humble and pathetic petitions to the Almighty: and when the first paralytic stroke 4 took his speech from him, he instantly set about composing a prayer in Latin, at once to deprecate God's mercy, to satisfy himself that his mental powers remained unimpaired, and to keep them in exercise, that they might not perish by permitted stagnation. This was after we parted ; but he wrote me an account of it, and I intend to publish that letter 5 , with many more.
��1 For his love of travelling see Life, iii. 449.
2 Johnson's Journal for this part of his tour is missing.
3 'JOHNSON. "Fear is one of the passions of human nature of which it is impossible to divest it. You re member that the Emperour Charles V, when he read upon the tomb-stone of a Spanish nobleman, ' Here lies one who never knew fear,' wittily said, ' Then he never snuffed a candle with his fingers.'" 3 Life, ii. 81. ' Johnson feared death, but he feared nothing else, not even what might occasion death.' Ib. ii. 298.
' It was the saying of one of the
��bravest men in this age, to one who told him he feared nothing, " Shew me but a certain danger, and I shall be as much afraid as any of you.'" Pope's Iliad, ed. 1760, vi. 19, n.
' Daniel Webster, the day he died, said, " No man who is not a brute can say that he is not afraid of death." ' Curtis's Webster, ii. 697.
4 It does not seem that he had more than one stroke. For his prayer in Latin see Life, iv. 230, n. I.
5 His letter begins : ' I am sitting down in no cheerful solitude to write a narrative which would once have affected you with tenderness and sorrow, but which you will perhaps
When
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