Twiss’s Eldon, i. 168.  The advice was not followed, for ’when a lawyer, a warm partisan of the Chancellor, called him one of the pillars of the Church; “No,” said another lawyer, “he may be one of its buttresses; but certainly not one of its pillars, for he is never found within it."’ Ib. iii. 488.  Lord Campbell (Lives of the Chancellors, vii. 716) says:—­Lord Eldon was never present at public worship in London from one year’s end to the other.  Pleading in mitigation before Lord Ellenborough that he attended public worship in the country, he received the rebuke, “as if there were no God in town.’”

[1260] Reynolds records:—­’During his last illness, when all hope was at an end, he appeared to be quieter and more resigned.  His approaching dissolution was always present to his mind.  A few days before he died, Mr. Langton and myself only present, he said he had been a great sinner, but he hoped he had given no bad example to his friends; that he had some consolation in reflecting that he had never denied Christ, and repeated the text, “Whoever denies me, &c.” [St. Matthew x. 33.] We were both very ready to assure him that we were conscious that we were better and wiser from his life and conversation; and that so far from denying Christ, he had been, in this age, his greatest champion.’  Taylor’s Reynolds, ii. 459.

[1261] Hannah More (Memoirs i. 393) says that Johnson, having put up a fervent prayer that Brocklesby might become a sincere Christian, ’caught hold of his hand with great earnestness, and cried, “Doctor, you do not say Amen.”  The Doctor looked foolishly, but after a pause cried “Amen"’ Her account, however, is often not accurate.

[1262] Windham records (Diary, p. 30) that on the night of the 12th he urged him to take some sustenance, ’and desisted only upon his exclaiming, “It is all very childish; let us hear no more of it."’ On his pressing him a second time, he answered that ’he refused no sustenance but inebriating sustenance.’  Windham thereupon asked him to take some milk, but ’he recurred to his general refusal, and begged that there might be an end of it.  I then said that I hoped he would forgive my earnestness; when he replied eagerly, “that from me nothing would be necessary by way of apology;” adding with great fervour, in words which I shall (I hope) never forget—­“God bless you, my dear Windham, through Jesus Christ;” and concluding with a wish that we might meet in some humble portion of that happiness which God might finally vouchsafe to repentant sinners.  These were the last words I ever heard him speak.  I hurried out of the room with tears in my eyes, and more affected than I had been on any former occasion.’  It was at a later hour in this same night that Johnson ’scarified himself in three places.  On Mr. Desmoulins making a difficulty of giving him the lancet he said, “Don’t you, if you have any scruples; but I will compel Frank,” and on Mr. Desmoulins attempting to prevent Frank from giving it to him, and at last to restrain his hands, he grew very outrageous, so much so as to call Frank “scoundrel” and to threaten Mr. Desmoulins that he would stab him.’ Ib. p. 32.