At last, perhaps, his death was accelerated by his own im prudence. If 'a little learning is a dangerous thing 1 ' on any speculative subject, it is eminently more so in the practical science of physic. Johnson was too frequently his own patient 2 . In October, [1784,] just before he came to London, he had taken an unusual dose of squills, but without effect 3 . He swallowed the same quantity on his arrival here, and it pro duced a most violent operation. He did not, as he afterwards confessed, reflect on the difference between the perished and inefficacious vegetable he found in the country, and the fresh and potent one of the same kind he was sure to meet with in town. 'You find me at present,' says he, * suffering from a prescription of my own. When I am recovered from its consequences, and not till then, I shall know the true state of my natural malady. 1 From this period, he took no medicine without the approbation of Heberden. What follows is known by all, and by all lamented ere now, perhaps even by the prebends of Westminster 4 .
Dr. Johnson confessed himself to have been sometimes in the power of bailiffs. Richardson, the author of Clarissa, was his constant friend on such occasions 5 . ' I remember writing to him/ said Johnson, ' from a sponging house ; and was so sure of my deliverance through his kindness and liberality, that, before his reply was brought, I knew I could afford to joke with the rascal who had me in custody, and did so, over a pint of adulterated wine, for which, at that instant, I had no money to pay 6 .'
1 POPE, Essay on Criticism, 1. 215. 6 Life, i. 304 n.
- Life, iii. 152; Letters, ii. 165 n. Johnson defines a spunging-house
3 On August 1 6 he had written to as 'a house to which debtors are Dr. Brocklesby: 'The squills I have taken before commitment to prison, not neglected ; for I have taken more where the bailiffs sponge upon them, than 100 drops a day, and one day or riot at their cost.' Why in all took 250.' On the iQth he wrote: likelihood Johnson ordered the wine ' The squills have every suffrage, and is explained in the following passage in the squills we will rest for the in Fielding's Amelia, Bk. viii. ch. present.' Life, iv. 355. 10 : '"What say you (said the
4 Ante, i. 449 n. ; ii. 137 n. bailiff to Booth) to a glass of white
5 Life, i. 303 ; Letters, i. 61. wine, or a tiff of punch, by way of
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