tirely
averse to society, the most fatal symptom of that malady. Dr. Adams
told me, that as an old friend he was admitted to visit him, and that he
found him in a deplorable state, sighing, groaning, talking to himself,
and restlessly walking from room to room. He then used this emphatical
expression of the misery which he felt: 'I would consent to have a limb
amputated to recover my spirits.'

Talking to himself was, indeed, one of his singularities ever since
I knew him. I was certain that he was frequently uttering pious
ejaculations; for fragments of the Lord's Prayer have been distinctly
overheard. His friend Mr. Thomas Davies, of whom Churchill says,

'That Davies hath a very pretty wife,'

when Dr. Johnson muttered 'lead us not into temptation,' used with
waggish and gallant humour to whisper Mrs. Davies, 'You, my dear, are
the cause of this.'

He had another particularity, of which none of his friends ever ventured
to ask an explanation. It appeared to me some superstitious habit, which
he had contracted early, and from which he had never called upon his
reason to disentangle him. This was his anxious care to go out or in at
a door or passage by a certain number of steps from a certain point, or
at least so as that either his right or his left foot, (I am not certain
which,) should constantly make the first actual movement when he came
close to the door or passage. Thus I conjecture: for I have, upon
innumerable occasions, observed him suddenly stop, and then seem to
count his steps with a deep earnestness; and when he had neglected or
gone wrong in this sort of magical movement, I have seen him go back
again, put himself in a proper posture to begin the ceremony, and,
having gone through it, break from his abstraction, walk briskly on, and
join his companion. A strange instance of something of this nature, even
when on horseback, happened when he was in the isle of Sky. Sir Joshua
Reynolds has observed him to go a good way about, rather than cross a
particular alley in Leicester-fields; but this Sir Joshua imputed to his
having had some disagreeable recollection associated with it.

That the most minute singularities which belonged to him, and made very
observable parts of his appearance and manner, may not be omitted, it is
requisite to mention, that while talking or even musing as he sat in his
chair, he commonly held his head to one side towards his right shoulder,
and shook it in a tremulous manner