professional skill
and ability, was tried, to prolong a life so truly valuable. He
himself, indeed, having, on account of his very bad constitution,
been perpetually applying himself to medical inquiries, united his own
efforts with those of the gentlemen who attended him; and imagining that
the dropsical collection of water which oppressed him might be drawn off
by making incisions in his body, he, with his usual resolute defiance
of pain, cut deep, when he thought that his surgeon had done it too
tenderly.*

* This bold experiment, Sir John Hawkins has related in such
a manner as to suggest a charge against Johnson of
intentionally hastening his end; a charge so very
inconsistent with his character in every respect, that it is
injurious even to refute it, as Sir John has thought it
necessary to do. It is evident, that what Johnson did in
hopes of relief, indicated an extraordinary eagerness to
retard his dissolution.--BOSWELL.

About eight or ten days before his death, when Dr. Brocklesby paid him
his morning visit, he seemed very low and desponding, and said, 'I have
been as a dying man all night.' He then emphatically broke out in the
words of Shakspeare:--

'Can'st thou not minister to a mind diseas'd;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff,
Which weighs upon the heart?'

To which Dr. Brocklesby readily answered, from the same great poet:--

'--therein the patient
Must minister to himself.'

Johnson expressed himself much satisfied with the application.

On another day after this, when talking on the subject of prayer, Dr.
Brocklesby repeated from Juvenal,--

'Orandum est, ut sit mens sana in corpore sano,'

and so on to the end of the tenth satire; but in running it quickly
over, he happened, in the line,

'Qui spatium vitae extremum inter munera ponat,'

to pronounce supremum for extremum; at which Johnson's critical ear
instantly took offence, and discoursing vehemently on the unmetrical
effect of such a lapse, he shewed himself as full as ever of the spirit
of the grammarian.

Having no near relations, it had been for some time Johnson's intention
to make a liberal provision for his faithful servant, Mr. Francis
Barber, whom he looked upon as particularly under his protecti