[1221] Psalm lxxxii. 7.

[1222] See Appendix E.

[1223] ’On being asked in his last illness what physician he had sent for, “Dr. Heberden,” replied he, “ultimus Romanorum, the last of the learned physicians."’ Seward’s Biographiana, p. 601.

[1224] Mr. Green related that when some of Johnson’s friends desired that Dr. Warren should be called in, he said they might call in whom they pleased; and when Warren was called, at his going away Johnson said, ’You have come in at the eleventh hour, but you shall be paid the same with your fellow-labourers.  Francis, put into Dr. Warren’s coach a copy of the English Poets.’  CROKER.  Dr. Warren ten years later attended Boswell in his last illness. Letters of Boswell, p. 355.  He was the great-grandfather of Col.  Sir Charles Warren, G.C.M.G., F.R.S., Chief Commissioner of Police.

[1225] 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.  Murphy (Life, p. 122) says that ’for many years, when Johnson was not disposed to enter into the conversation going forward, whoever sat near his chair might hear him repeating from Shakespeare [Measure for Measure, act iii. sc. i]:—­

     “Ay, but to die and go we know not where;
      To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
      This sensible warm motion to become
      A kneaded clot; and the delighted spirit
      To bathe in fiery floods.”

And from Milton [Paradise Lost, ii. 146]:—­

          “Who would lose
      Though full of pain this intellectual being?"’

Johnson, the year before, at a time when he thought that he must submit to the surgeon’s knife (ante, p. 240), wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—­’You would not have me for fear of pain perish in putrescence.  I shall, I hope, with trust in eternal mercy lay hold of the possibility of life which yet remains.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 312.  Hawkins records (Life, p. 588) that one day Johnson said to his doctor:—­’How many men in a year die through the timidity of those whom they consult for health!  I want length of life, and you fear giving me pain, which I care not for.’  Another day, ’when Mr. Cruikshank scarified his leg, he cried out, “Deeper, deeper.  I will abide the consequence; you are afraid of your reputation, but that is nothing to me.”  To those about him, he said, “You all pretend to love me, but you do not love me so well as I myself do.” ’Ib. p. 592.  Windham (Diary, p. 32) says that he reproached Heberden with being timidorum timidissimus.  Throughout he acted up to what he had said:—­’I will be conquered, I will not capitulate.’ Ante, P. 374.