The Rev. J. Hamilton Davies writes to me that 'Dr. Johnson's quotation about suicide must surely be wrong. I have no recollection in any of Baxter's Works of such a statement, and it is in direct contradiction to all that is known of his sentiments. 'Mr. Davies sends me the following passage, which possibly Johnson might have very imperfectly remembered:—
'The commonest cause [of suicide] is melancholy, &c. Though there be much more hope of the salvation of such as want the use of their understandings, because so far it may be called involuntary, yet it is a very dreadful case, especially so far as reason remaineth in any power.' —Baxter's _Christian Directory, edited by Orme, part iv, p. 138.
Haslitt's report of Baxter's Sermon.
(Vol. iv, p. 226, n. 2.)
The Rev. J. Hamilton Davies tells me that he 'entirely disbelieves that Baxter said, "Hell was paved with infants' skulls." The same thing, or something very like it, has been said of Calvin, but I could never,' Mr. Davies continues, 'find it in his Works.' He kindly sends me the following extract from Reliquiae Baxterianae, ed. 1696, p. 24:—
'Once all the ignorant Rout were raging mad against me for preaching the Doctrine of Original Sin to them, and telling them that Infants before Regeneration had so much Guilt and Corruption, as made them loathsome in the Eyes of God: whereupon they vented it abroad in the Country, That I preached that God hated, or loathed Infants; so that they railed at me as I passed through the streets. The next Lord's Day, I cleared and confirmed it, and shewed them that if this were not true, their Infants had no need of Christ, of Baptism, or of Renewing by the Holy Ghost. And I asked them whether they durst say that their Children were saved without a Saviour, and were no Christians, and why they baptized them, with much more to that purpose, and afterwards they were ashamed and as mute as fishes.'
Johnson on an actor's transformation.
(Vol. iv, p. 244.)
Boswell in his Remarks on the Profession of a Player (Essay ii), first printed in the London Magazine for 1770, says:—
'I remember to have heard the most illustrious authour of this age say: "If, Sir, Garrick believes himself to be every character that he represents he is a madman, and ought to be confined. Nay, Sir, he is a villain, and ought to be hanged. If, for instance, he believes himself to be Macbeth he has committed murder, he is a vile assassin who, in violation of the laws of hospitality as well as of other principles, has imbrued his hands in the blood of his King while he was sleeping under his roof. If, Sir, he has really been that person in his own mind, he has in his own mind been as guilty as Macbeth." '—Nichols's Literary History, ed. 1848, vii. 373.