Hamilton's Poems, ed. 1760, p. 59.
[426] In the original, Now. Ib. p. 39.
[427] Thomson, in The Seasons, Winter, 1. 915, describes how the ocean
'by the boundless frost Is many a fathom to the bottom chain'd.'
In 1. 992, speaking of a thaw, he says,
'The rivers swell of bonds impatient.'
[428] See ante March 24, 1776.
[429] Johnson wrote of Pope (Works, viii. 309):—'The indulgence and accommodation which his sickness required had taught him all the unpleasing and unsocial qualities of a valetudinary man.'
[430] When he was ill of a fever he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'The doctor was with me again to-day, and we both think the fever quite gone. I believe it was not an intermittent, for I took of my own head physick yesterday; and Celsus says, it seems, that if a cathartick be taken the fit will return certo certius. I would bear something rather than Celsus should be detected in an error. But I say it was a febris continua, and had a regular crisis.' Piozzi Letters, i. 89.
[431] Johnson must have shortened his life by the bleedings that he underwent. How many they were cannot be known, for no doubt he was often bled when he has left no record of it. The following, however, I have noted. I do not know that he was bled more than most people of his time. Dr. Taylor, it should seem, underwent the operation every quarter.