Dr. Johnson wrote a satirical review of Soame Jenyns, which had great popularity at the time. He passes without notice the fact that men of all ages, and of all religions, have believed that malicious Spirits cause diseases, and tempt men, in many ways, to their destruction; while benevolent Spirits cure physical and mental evils, forewarn men in dreams, and assist them in various emergencies. There was, therefore, nothing very new or peculiar in the suggestion of Mr. Jenyns; but Dr. Johnson, in his rough way, caricatures it thus: “He imagines that as we have animals not only for food, but some for our diversion, the same privilege may be allowed to beings above us, who may deceive, torment, or destroy us, for the ends only of their own pleasure or utility. He might have carried the analogy further, much to the advantage of his argument. He might have shown that these hunters, whose game is man, have many sports analogous to our own. As we drown whelps and kittens, they amuse themselves now and then with sinking a ship; and they stand round the fields of Blenheim, or the walls of Prague, as we encircle a cock-pit. As we shoot a bird flying, they knock a man down with apoplexy, in the midst of his business or pleasure. Perhaps some of them are virtuosi, and delight in the operations of an asthma, as human philosophers do in the effects of an air-pump. Many a merry bout have these frolic beings at the vicissitudes of an ague; and good sport it is to see a man tumble with an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again; and all this he knows not why. Perhaps now and then a merry being may place himself in such a situation as to enjoy at once all the varieties of an epidemic disease, or amuse his leisure with the tossings and contortions of every possible pain exhibited together.”