Samuel Johnson's alcohol problem.

TIERE is ample evidence to show that Samuel Johnson's ability to moderate his consumption of alcohol was so impaired that for long periods he was obliged to abstain. Hannah More described how, when she urged him 'to take a little wine, he replied, "I can't drink a little, child, therefore I never touch it. Abstinence is as easy to me, as temperance would be difficult." '1 When he was on Skye, Lady M'Leod, hardly crediting his reason for refusing drink, said, 'I am sure, sir, you would not carry it too far,' to which Johnson replied, 'Nay, madam, it carried me. I took the opportunity of a long illness to leave it off. It was then prescribed to me not to drink wine; and having broken off the habit, I have never returned to it.'2 Mrs. Thrale noted: 'With regard to -Drink his liking is for the strongest [her italics], as it is not the Flavour but the Effect of Wine which he even professes to desire, and he used often to pour Capillaire into his Glass of Port when it was his Custom to drink Wine which he has now wholly left off.'3 In 1778 he stated: 'I now drink no wine, Sir. Early in life I drank wine: for many years I drank none. I then for some years drank a great deal.'4 Nevertheless, the full details of Johnson's pathological drinking cannot be determined, for the following reasons. Firstly, although he was at times refreshingly frank about his difficulties with alcohol, he could also be understandably secretive in this respect: 'When I drank wine, I scorned to drink it when in company. I have drunk many a bottle by myself; in the first place, because I had need of it to raise my spirits: in the second place, because I would have nobody to witness its effects upon me.'5 In addition, his biographers did not know him well during the years when his drinking was probably at its height (with the exception of Murphy, who first met Johnson in 1754); Hawkins' acquaintanceship goes back to Johnson's early years in London, but was not intimate; Boswell was introduced to him in 1763, and Mrs. Thrale in 1765; Garrick accompanied Johnson from Lichfield to the capital when both were young men, and the pair remained friends, but the actor's anecdotes are known only at second hand. Finally, Johnson on his death bed destroyed nearly all his private papers-their loss is tragic for many reasons, although the manuscripts he handed at the time to George Strahan record a struggle with alcohol from 1760 to 1767, at first by attempts to drink less, and finally by abstinence., The Birmingham surgeon, Mr. Hector, told Boswell that as a young man Johnson 'loved to exhilarate himself with wine,' though Hector 'never knew him intoxicated but once.'7 According to Boswell, the first period of abstinence commenced around the time Johnson moved to London at the age of twenty-eight in 1737,8 but Murphy's deduction is more attractive, that Johnson used to enjoy a bottle with the unstable poet Savage, and that 'his abstinence from wine and strong liquors began soon