Note 627 — Chapter I · FROM ADDISON TO JOHNSON. (continued 2)
Reading edition
He was perhaps the last man of very great power who entertained the Renaissance superstition of Latin. He was horrified at the notion of an English epitaph; and in the first agony of his stroke in 1783 he rallied and racked his half-paralysed brains to make Latin verses as the best test of his sanity.