单选题 Visitors to St Paul''s Cathedral are sometimes astonished as they walk round the space under the dome to come upon a statue which would appear to be that of a retired gladiator meditating upon a wasted life. They are still more astonished when they see under it an inscription indicating that it represents the English writer, Samuel Johnson. The statue is by Bacon, but it is not one of his best works. The figure is, as often in 18th-century sculpture, clothed only in a loose robe which leaves arms, legs and one shoulder bare. But the strangeness for us is not one of costume only. If we know anything of Johnson, we know that he was constantly ill all through his life; and whether we know anything of him or not we are apt to think of a literary man as a delicate, weak, nervous sort of person. Nothing can be further from that than the muscular statue. And in this matter the statue is perfectly right. And the fact which it reports is far from being unimportant. "The body and the mind are inextricably interwoven" in all of us, and certainly on Johnson''s case the influence of the body was obvious and conspicuous. His melancholy, his constantly repeated conviction of the general unhappiness of human life, was certainly the result of his constitutional infirmities. On the other hand, his courage, and his entire indifference to pain, were partly due to his great bodily strength. Perhaps the vein of rudeness, almost of fierceness, which sometimes showed itself in his conversation, was the natural temper of an invalid and suffering giant. That at any rate is what he was. He was the victim from childhood of a disease which resembled St Vitus''s Dance. He never knew the natural joy of a free and vigorous use of his limbs; when he walked it was like the struggling walk of one in irons. All accounts agree that his strange gesticulations and contortations were painful for his friends to witness and attracted crowds of starers in the streets. But Reynolds says that he could sit still for his portrait to be taken, and that when his mind was engaged by a conversation the convulsions ceased. In any case, it is certain that neither this perpetual misery, nor his constant fear of losing his reason, nor his many grave attacks of illness, ever induced him to surrender the privileges that belonged to his physical strength. He justly thought no character so disagreeable as that of a chronic invalid, and was determined not to be one himself. He had known what it was to live on four pence a day and scorned the life of sofa cushions and tea into which well-attended old gentlemen so easily slip.

单选题 We understand from the passage that most 18th-century sculpture was________.

单选题 "The body and the mind are inextricably interwoven" means they________.

单选题 The author says Johnson found it very difficult to walk because________.

单选题 Because Johnson was very strong physically he could________.

单选题 According to the passage, Johnson had________.