22 DECEMBER 1900, Page 14

HELL RATHER THAN ANNIHILATION P [To THE EDITOR OF THE

"SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I suppose your readers by this time are pretty tired of the correspondence on "Hell and Annihilation." But if you care to print another note on the subject, may I refer your correspondents to the thirty-eighth chapter of Boswell's Life of Johnson, in which the following portion of a dialogue will be found?—

"Miss Seward. There is one mode of the fear of death, which is certainly absurd, and that is the fear of annihilation, which is only a pleasing sleep without a dream. Johnson. It is neither pleasing nor sleep ; it is nothing. Now mere existence is so much better than nothing, that one would rather exist in pain, than not exist."

Orton, Hall, Westmoreland.