spectively. He had also a natural daughter, known as Miss Ousley, who married a Welsh gentleman named Stynston. About 1718 it seems to have been proposed to marry her to Richard Savage the poet.

There are three principal portraits of Steele, all mentioned by himself (Theatre, No. 2) in answer to an attack made upon him by John Dennis the critic. The first, by Jonathan Richardson, now in the National Portrait Gallery, was executed in 1712, and gives us the Steele of the 'Spectator.' It was engraved in the following year by J. Smith, and later by Bartolozzi and Meadows. The second, by Sir Godfrey Kneller, was painted shortly afterwards for the Kit-Cat Club (of which Steele was among the earlier members), and exhibits him in one of the fine full-bottomed black periwigs he wore when he rode abroad (DRAKE, Essays, 1814, i. 179). This belongs to Mr. Baker of Bayfordbury, and has been engraved by Vertue, Simon, Faber, Houbraken, and others. The third, by Thornhill, is at Cobham Hall, and was reproduced in copper by Vertue in 1713, and by James Basire. In this Steele appears in a dressing-gown and a tasselled cap. The Richardson, he tells us, makes him 'indolent,' the Kneller 'resolute,' the Thornhill 'thoughtful.' There is another reputed Kneller at Stationers' Hall; and there is said to be a portrait of him when he was a commissioner in Scotland, by Michael Dahl. The Thornhill is the best known; the Kneller Kit-Cat is probably the best likeness. Sir Godfrey also executed a picture of Lady Steele, which does full justice to her good looks. It belongs to Mrs. Thomas of Moreb, Llandilo, Carmarthenshire, and figures as the frontispiece to vol. ii. of Mr. Aitken's 'Life.'

As regards the written portraits of his character, Macaulay in his famous essay on Addison sought by deeply drawn lines to heighten the contrast between Steele and his colleague. Thackeray softened the asperity of the likeness in his lecture (in the "English Humourists'). Forster's vindicatory study in the 'Quarterly' is not entirely sympathetic. That Steele was an undetected hypocrite and a sentimental debauchee is now no longer maintained, although it cannot be denied that his will was often weaker than his purpose; that he was constitutionally improvident and impecunious; and that, like many of his contemporaries in that

hard-drinking century, he was far too easily seduced by his compliant good-fellowship into excess in wine. 'I shall not carry my humility so far as to call myself a vicious man,' he wrote in 'Tatler' No. 271, 'but must confess my life is at best but pardonable.' When so much is admitted, it is needless to charge the picture, though it may be added that, with all his faults, allowed and imputed, there is abundant evidence to prove that he was not only a doting husband and an affectionate father, but also a loyal friend and an earnest and unselfish patriot. As a literary man his claim upon posterity is readily stated. As a poet even in that indulgent age of Anne- he cannot be classed; as a pamphleteer he is plain-spoken and well-meaning, but straggling and ineffectual; as a dramatist, despite his shrewd perceptive faculty and his laudable desire to purify the stage, his success is no more than respectable. In the brief species of essay, however, which he originated and developed the essay of the 'Tatler' and its immediate successors - he is at home. Without ranking as a great stylist — his hand was too hasty for laboured form or finish, and he claimed and freely used the license of 'common speech' he was a master of that unembarrassed manner which (it has been well said) is the outcome of an unembarrassed matter. He writes,

as a rule, less from his head than from his heart, to the warmth of which organ his rapid pen gives eager and emphatic expression. His humour is delightfully kindly and genial, his sympathies quickspringing and compassionate, his instincts uniformly on the side of what is generous, honest, manly, and of good report. 'He had a love and reverence of virtue,' said Pope; and many of his lay sermons are unrivalled in their kind. As the first painter of domesticity the modern novel owes him much, but the women of his own day owe him more. Not only did he pay them collectively a magnificent compliment when he wrote of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, that 'to love her was a liberal education' (Tatler, No. 49); but in a time when they were treated by the wits with contemptuous flattery or cynical irreverence, he sought to offer them a reasonable service of genuine respect which was immeasurably superior to those 'fulsome raptures, guilty impressions, senseless deifications and pretended deaths' with which (as he himself wrote in 'The Christian Hero') it was the custom of his contemporaries to insult their understandings.

THE LIFE OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON

SIR LESLIE STEPHEN

[From the Dictionary of National Biography.]

JOHNSON, SAMUEL (1709–1784), lexicographer, son of Michael Johnson, bookseller at Lichfield, by his wife Sarah (Ford), was born at Lichfield on 18 Sept. (N.S.) 1709, and was baptised 17 Sept. (i.e. 28 Sept. N.S.), according to the parish register (Gent. Mag. October 1829; cf. A. L. READE's The Reades of Blackwood Hill .. with account of Dr. Johnson's ancestry, 1906). The father, born in 1656, remembered the publication of ‘Absalom and Achitophel' in 1681 (JOHNSON, Life of Dryden). He transmitted to his son a powerful frame and 'a vile melancholy.' Besides keeping his shop (now preserved as a public memorial) at Lichfield he sold books occasionally at Birmingham, at Uttoxeter, and at Ashby-de-la-Zouch. He was churchwarden in 1688, sheriff of Lichfield (then a county) in 1709, junior bailiff in 1718, and senior bailiff in 1725. As became a bookseller in a cathedral town, he was a high churchman, and something of a Jacobite. Unbusinesslike habits or a speculation in the 'manufacture of parchment' brought him into difficulties. His wife, born in 1669 at King's Norton, Worcestershire, is described as 'descendant of an ancient race of yeomanry in Warwickshire.' They married on 9 June 1706 (ib. ii. 384), and had, besides Samuel, a son Nathanael, born in 1712, who died in 1737.

Strange stories were told of Samuel's precocity. It is said that before he was three years old he insisted upon going to church to hear Sacheverell preach (BOSWELL, Life, by Hill, i. 39). His father was foolishly proud of him, and passed off an epitaph on 'Good Master Duck,' really written by himself, as Samuel's composition at the age of three. The child suffered from scrofula, which disfigured his face and injured or destroyed the sight of one eye. He was 'touched' by Queen Anne, and he retained a vague recollection of a 'lady in diamonds and a long black hood' (PIOZZI, Anecdotes, p. 10). He learnt his letters at a dame-school under one Jane Brown, who published a spelling-book, and ‘dedi

cated it to the Universe,' which, however, has preserved no copies. He next learnt Latin in Lichfield school. After two years he was under the head-master, Hunter, who was a brutal but efficient teacher. Johnson afterwards valued the birch as a less demoralising incentive than emulation. His force of mind and character already secured respect, and three of his school-fellows used regularly to carry him to school. One of them, named Hector, survived to give information to Boswell. He was indolent and unwieldy, unable to join in games, and 'immoderately fond' of reading the old romances, a taste which he retained through life. In the autumn of 1725 (HAWKINS) he visited an uncle, Cornelius Ford, a clergyman, who wasted considerable ability by convivial habits (JOHNSON, Life of Fenton). Ford was struck by the lad's talents, and kept him till the next Whitsuntide. He was then excluded from the Lichfield school, and sent, by Ford's advice, to a school at Stourbridge under a Mr. Wentworth, whom he is also said to have assisted in teaching. After a year he returned home, and spent two years in 'lounging.' It was at this time probably that he refused, out of pride, to attend his father to Uttoxeter market. On the same day some fifty years later he performed penance for this offence by visiting Uttoxeter market and standing bareheaded for an hour in the rain on the site of his father's bookstall (BOSWELL, iv. 373; R. WARNER, Tour through the Northern Counties; for some slight discrepancies in these statements see Notes and Queries, 6th ser. xi. 1, 91, 193). He read a great deal in a desultory fashion, and said afterwards (BOSWELL, Letters, p. 34) that he knew as much at eighteen as he did at fifty-two. He had written verses, of which Boswell gives specimens (one of them inserted in the Gent. Mag. for 1743, p. 378), and had no doubt made a reputation among his father's customers at Lichfield. A 'neighbouring gentleman, Mr. Andrew Corbet,' according to Hawkins (p. 9), offered to send Johnson to Oxford to read with his son, who had entered Pembroke College in 1727. Johnson was entered as a commoner on 31 Oct. 1728. According to Hawkins a disagreement with Corbet followed, and Johnson's supplies from this source were stopped after a time. The dates, however, are confused. Hawkins and Boswell say that Johnson remained three years at Oxford. The college books show him to have resided

continuously till 12 Dec. 1729, after which he only resided for a few brief periods, and his name was removed on 8 Oct. 1731 (see appendix to HILL'S Dr. Johnson, his Friends and his Critics). Johnson's tutor was a Mr. Jorden. He despised Jorden's lectures, though he respected the kindliness of the lecturer. Johnson seems to have surprised the college authorities by the extent of his reading, and a Latin translation of Pope's 'Messiah,' performed as a Christmas exercise, spread his reputation in the university, and was printed in 1731 in an Oxford 'Miscellany' brought out by J. Husbands, a fellow of Pembroke. Pope, to whom it was shown by George, son of Dr. Arbuthnot, is said to have paid it a high compliment (HAWKINS, p. 13). Johnson was said by William Adams (1706-1789) [q. v.], who succeeded Jorden as tutor, to have been a 'gay and frolicsome fellow,' and generally popular at Oxford. Johnson told Boswell, upon hearing this, that he was only 'mad and violent.' He was 'miserably poor,' meant to 'fight his way by his literature and wit, and so disregarded all authority.' He was occasionally insubordinate (BOSWELL, i. 59, 271), but amenable to kindness. He suffered from hypochondria, of which (ib. p. 63) he had a violent attack at Lichfield during the vacation of 1729. He frequently, says Boswell, walked from Lichfield to Birmingham and back in order to overcome his melancholy by violent exertion. He wrote an account of his case in Latin, and laid it before his godfather, Dr. Swinfen, who was so much struck by its ability that, to Johnson's lasting offence, he showed it to several friends. While at Oxford he took up the 'Serious Call' of William Law [q. v.], by which he was profoundly affected. He had previously fallen into indifference to religious matters, and was even 'a lax talker against religion.' From this time his religious sentiments were always strong, though he continued to reproach himself with carelessness in practice. His poverty exposed him to vexations. His schoolfellow, John Taylor, afterwards J. Taylor of Ashbourne, proposed to become his companion at Pembroke, but upon Johnson's advice went to Christ Church to be under a Mr. Bateman, regarded as the best tutor at Oxford. Johnson used to get Bateman's lectures from Taylor, till he observed that the Christ Church men laughed at his wornout shoes. Some one placed a new pair of shoes at his door,