158 Anecdotes.
��conscience as lightened of a crime. He redoubled his diligence to learn the language that contained the information he most wished for; but from the pain which guilt had given him, he now began to deduce the soul's immortality, which was the point that belief first stopped at ; and from that moment re solving to be a Christian, became one of the most zealous and pious ones our nation ever produced x . When he had told me Ahis odd anecdote of his childhood ; ' I cannot imagine (said he) / what makes me talk of myself to you so, for I really never I mentioned this foolish story to any body except Dr. Taylor, not \ , even to my dear dear Bathurst, whom I loved better than ever 1 loved any human creature ; but poor Bathurst is dead ! ! ! 2 ' Here a long pause and a few tears ensued. Why Sir, said I, how like is all this to Jean Jaques Rousseau ! 3 as like, I mean, as the sensations of frost and fire, when my child complained yesterday that the ice she was eating burned her mouth. Mr. Johnson laughed at the incongruous ideas ; but the first thing which presented itself to the mind of an ingenious and learned friend whom I had the pleasure to pass some time with here at Florence, was the same resemblance, though I think the two characters had little in common, further than an early attention to things beyond the capacity of other babies, a keen sensibility of right and wrong, and a warmth of imagination little consistent with sound and perfect health. I have heard him relate another odd thing of himself too, but it is one which every body has heard as well as I : how, when he was about nine years old, having got the play of Hamlet in his hand, and reading it quietly in his father's kitchen, he kept on steadily enough, till coming to the Ghost scene, he suddenly hurried up stairs to the street door that he might see people about him 4 : such an incident, as he was not unwilling to relate it, is probably in
1 For Boswell's criticism of 'this 4 He told Boswell also of this strange fantastical account ' see Life, terror that came upon him. Life^ i. 68, . 3. i. 70. In his Observations on Mac-
The book entitled De Veritate beth he says : ' He that peruses
Religionis was, no doubt, Grotius's Shakespeare looks round alarmed,
work. and starts to find himself alone.'
2 Ante, p. 29. Works, v. 71.
3 In his Confessions.
every
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