He never seems to have been thoroughly well for many days together. He
implied no more than the truth when he speaks of his Muse as helping him
through that "long disease, his life." Writing to Bathurst in 1728, he
says that he does not expect to enjoy any health for four days together;
and, not long after, Bathurst remonstrates with him for his
carelessness, asking him whether it is not enough to have the headache
for four days in the week and be sick for the other three. It is no
small proof of intellectual energy that he managed to do so much
thorough work under such disadvantages, and his letters show less of the
invalid's querulous spirit than we might well have pardoned. Johnson
gives a painful account of his physical defects, on the authority of an
old servant of Lord Oxford, who frequently saw him in his later years.
He was so weak as to be unable to rise to dress himself without help. He
was so sensitive to cold that he had to wear a kind of fur doublet under
a coarse linen shirt; one of his sides was contracted, and he could
scarcely stand upright till he was laced into a boddice made of stiff
canvas; his legs were so slender that he had to wear three pairs of
stockings, which he was unable to draw on and off without help. His
seat had to be raised to bring him to a level with common tables. In one
of his papers in the _Guardian_ he describes himself apparently as Dick
Distich: "a lively little creature, with long legs and arms; a spider[7]
is no ill emblem of him; he has been taken at a distance for a small
windmill.
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