'I hope
To put my rooms in order.
Disorder I have found one great cause of idleness.'
[1414] Ib. p. 51. BOSWELL.
[1415] It was on his birth-day that he said this. He wrote on the same day:—'I have outlived many friends. I have felt many sorrows. I have made few improvements.'
[1416] Prayers and Meditations, p. 58. BOSWELL. In his Vision of Theodore (Works, ix. 174) he describes the state of mind which he has recorded in his Meditations:—'There were others whose crime it was rather to neglect Reason than to disobey her; and who retreated from the heat and tumult of the way, not to the bowers of Intemperance, but to the maze of Indolence. They had this peculiarity in their condition, that they were always in sight of the road of Reason, always wishing for her presence, and always resolving to return to-morrow.'
[1417] See Appendix F.
[1418] It used to be imagined at Mr. Thrale's, when Johnson retired to a window or corner of the room, by perceiving his lips in motion, and hearing a murmur without audible articulation, that he was praying: but this was not always the case, for I was once, perhaps unperceived by him, writing at a table, so near the place of his retreat, that I heard him repeating some lines in an ode of Horace, over and over again, as if by iteration, to exercise the organs of speech, and fix the ode in his memory:
Audiet cives acuisse ferrum
Quo graves Persas melius perirent,
Audiet pugnas….
Odes, i. 2, 21.
['Our sons shall hear, shall hear to latest times,
Of Roman arms with civil gore imbrued,
Which better had the Persian foe subdued.'
Francis.]
It was during the American War. BURNEY. Boswell in his Hebrides (Oct. 12, 1773) records, 'Dr. Johnson is often uttering pious ejaculations, when he appears to be talking to himself; for sometimes his voice grows stronger, and parts of the Lord's Prayer are heard.' In the same passage he describes other 'particularities,' and adds in a note:—'It is remarkable that Dr. Johnson should have read this account of some of his own peculiar habits, without saying anything on the subject, which I hoped he would have done.' See post, Dec. 1784, note.
[1419] Churchill's Poems, i. 16. See ante, p. 391.
[1420] 'It is in vain to try to find a meaning in every one of his particularities, which, I suppose, are mere habits contracted by chance; of which every man has some that are more or less remarkable.' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 12, 1773. 'The love of symmetry and order, which is natural to the mind of man, betrays him sometimes into very whimsical fancies. "This noble principle," says a French author, "loves to amuse itself on the most trifling occasions. You may see a profound philosopher," says he, "walk for an hour together in his chamber, and industriously treading at every step upon every other board in the flooring."' The Spectator, No. 632.