Another cause of non-fulfilment may be a legal barrier. There is no legal method of enforcing a testator’s wishes for the disposal of his body, except for anatomical purposes. The bequest is void if money be given to expend the interest in keeping up a grave. In England there is a legal obstacle against a bequest for the celebration of masses for the repose of the soul: it is termed a “superstitious trust” and is invalid. The famous decision in 1835 in the case of _West v. Shuttleworth_ has not been superseded. The Master of the Rolls, Sir Charles Pepys, afterwards Lord Cottenham, held that in this country gifts to priests “that I may have the benefit of their prayers and masses,” or “for the benefit of the prayers for the repose of my soul, and that of my deceased husband,” were void, and void such bequests remain. Personal reasons, lastly, may bring about the breaking of a will. Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey’s recommendations for his funeral have been quoted: he desired to be buried in the meanest place, without pomp or pageantry, without numerous attendants either of friends or relations, very early in the morning or very late at night, as privately as possible, without sermon or harangue. But the excitement and notoriety of his end, the passions that it aroused or signified, could not suffer him so to depart. His death and funeral are part of the history of his time. On October 12, 1678, he disappeared: on the 17th he was found dead in a ditch on the southern side of Primrose Hill. The funeral was postponed till the 31st, when his body was borne to Old Bridewell, and publicly lay in state. A solemn procession accompanied it through Fleet Street and the Strand to St. Martin’s Church, where it was buried and a sermon preached by the vicar, William Lloyd. Thus was his will wholly set at nought—a remarkable but perhaps a pardonable violation. CHAPTER III DR. JOHNSON’S WILL “My readers,” writes Boswell, “are now, at last, to behold Samuel Johnson preparing himself for that doom from which the most exalted powers afford no exemption to man.” There can be few sights more fascinating. In the case of Johnson there is an especial fascination, since for many years he felt, and at times expressed, fear and horror of death in a degree to which most men are strangers. He said “he never had a moment in which death was not terrible to him.” But toward the end this horror abated, so that there is a peculiar beauty in the opening of his will, which he made but five days before his death. “In the name of God, Amen. I, Samuel Johnson, being in full possession of my faculties, but fearing this night may put an end to my life, do ordain this my last will and testament. I bequeath to God a soul polluted with many sins, but I hope purified by repentance and I trust redeemed by Jesus Christ.”