Life of Johnson: Death

Johnson had a peculiarly intense fear of dying. If Boswell brought up the subject of death, he grew agitated and if pressed farther was hardly able to speak and was physically affected as well. It was not very kind of Boswell to upset Johnson so more than once; he admits it himself. Still, the experience let Boswell give this wonderful description of Johnson's fears:

His mind resembled the vast amphitheater, the Coliseum at Rome. In the center stood his judgment, which, like a mighty gladiator, combated those apprehensions that, like the wild beasts of the Arena, were all around in cells, ready to be let out upon him. After the conflict, he drove them back into their dens; but not killing them, they were still assailing him.

I wish I had learned earlier that, though different people have different wild beasts of the mind, it is true for everyone that most of the beasts can never be killed; only in the last few years did I realize, to continue the metaphor, that the nearest thing to victory is to learn the special tricks to send each beast crawling back to its den with the least combat.

On another occasion (like the first, provoked by Hume's carelessness of death), Johnson says that "he never had a moment in which death was not terrible to him." He adds, "The better a man is, the more afraid he is of death, having a clearer view of infinite purity." I think he means, a better man knows better how far he falls short of perfection, and so knows better how he deserves damnation. Boswell elsewhere does say he thought Johnson's fear to be not of dying, but of what came after. Still, it was talk of death that upset Johnson, not talk of the afterlife.

When Boswell asks, "Is not the fear of death natural to man?" Johnson answers, "So much so that the whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of it." He feared for his conduct on his deathbed and wondered, "I know not whether I should wish to have a friend by me, or have it all between God and myself." As with his drinking, even in the greatest pain he wished no one to see him fail in right conduct. I recently experienced this ranking of shame above pain when I went in for some neurological testing related to a long illness. The tests, which return immediate results, had a significant chance of finding that I had a progressive illness that would soon cripple and in a decade or two kill me. A sweet-natured friend wanted very much to drive for me, and I found myself asking a question much like Johnson's. In the end I asked my brother to come, since someone had to and there is less shame in going to pieces in front of a brother. As it happens, the tests returned good results, but I would make the same choice again. The experience of keeping composure under considerable strain makes me more easily believe Johnson's observation that "scarce any man dies in public, but with apparent resolution; from that desire of praise which never quits us." Of course that was the last century of frequent public executions in England, so the observation would not be merely speculative.

By the way, I am not giving page numbers because if you search for any phrase from a quotation (you may have to convert it back to British spelling) you will turn up the right page on books.google.com. Also, the page numbers on the Google books editions are not at all similar.