Paul's thorn in the flesh, to check intellectual conceit and arrogance;
which the consciousness of his extraordinary talents, awake as he was to
the voice of praise, might otherwise have generated in a very culpable
degree. Another observation strikes me, that in consequence of the same
natural indisposition, and habitual sickliness, (for he says he scarcely
passed one day without pain after his twentieth year,) he considered and
represented human life, as a scene of much greater misery than is
generally experienced. There may be persons bowed down with affliction
all their days; and there are those, no doubt, whose iniquities rob them
of rest; but neither calamities nor crimes, I hope and believe, do so
much and so generally abound, as to justify the dark picture of life
which Johnson's imagination designed, and his strong pencil delineated.
This I am sure, the colouring is far too gloomy for what I have
experienced, though as far as I can remember, I have had more sickness
(I do not say more severe, but only more in quantity,) than falls to the
lot of most people. But then daily debility and occasional sickness were
far overbalanced by intervenient days, and, perhaps, weeks void of pain,
and overflowing with comfort.
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