Amen.'
About this time he was afflicted with a very severe return of the
hypochondriack disorder, which was ever lurking about him. He was so
ill, as, notwithstanding his remarkable love of company, to be entirely
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.
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