All that is necessary to remark on his examen of Pope's epitaphs is, that, in one instance, it was productive of a fingular event, the total erasure of that epitaph on Sir Godfrey Kneller's monument in Weftminster abbey, which had long been objected to, as being a very indifferent imitation of cardinal Bembo's famous diftich on Raphael*; and it feems that the author thought fo, for, in the later editions of his works, he has omitted it,

Ille hic eft Raphaël, timuit quo fofpite vinci
'Rerum magna parens, & moriente mori.'

After he had finished the lives of the poets, Johnson, contemplating the strength of his mental powers, was fo little fenfible of any decay in them, that he entertained a design of giving to the world a translation of that voluminous work of Thuanus, the hiftory of his own times, an undertaking furely too laborious for one who had nearly completed the age of man, and whose mind was generally occupied by subjects of greater importance than any that relate to this world. But, in this estimate of his abilities, he foon found himself deceived. Sleepless nights, and the ufe of opium, which he took in large quantities, alternately depreffed and raised his fpirits, and rendered him an incompetent judge of his own powers, fo that, had he pursued his refolution, he would, doubtlefs, have funk under the burden of fo great a labour.

It may farther be queftioned whether, upon trial, he would not have found himself unequal to the task of transfusing into an English version the spirit

It is lately restored.

of

of his author. Johnson's talent was original thinking, and though he was ever able to exprefs his own fentiments in nervous language, he did not always fucceed in his attempts to familiarife the sense of others: his tranflation of Pere Lobo's voyage has little to recommend it but the fubject-matter. Among his papers was found, a tranflation from Salluft of the • Bellum Catilinarium,' so flatly and infipidly rendered, that the fuffering it to appear would have been an indelible difgrace to his memory.

We must now take our leave of Johnson as an author, and view him as a man worn out with literary labour and disease, contemplating his diffolution, and exerting all his powers to refift that conftitutional malady which now, more than ever, oppreffed him. To divert himself from a train of thinking which often involved him in a labyrinth of doubts and difficulties touching a future state of existence, he folicited the frequent vifits of his friends and acquaintance, the most difcerning of whom could not but fee, that the fabric of his mind was tottering; and, to allay thofe fcruples and terrors which haunted him in his vacant hours, he betook himself to the reading of books of practical divinity, and, among the reft, the writings of Baxter, and others of the old puritan and non-conforming divines. Of Baxter, he entertained a very high opinion, and often spoke of him to me as a man of great parts, profound learning, and exemplary piety: he faid, of the office for the communion drawn up by him and produced at the Savoy-conference, that it was one of the finest compofitions of the ritual kind he had ever feen *.

It is printed at the end of the first volume of Dr. Calamy's abridgement of Mr. Baxter's Hiftory of his Life and Times.

It was a circumstance to be wondered at, that a highchurchman, as Johnfon ever profeffed himself to be, fhould be driven to feek for fpiritual comfort in the writings of fectaries; men whom he affected, as well to condemn for their ignorance, as to hate for their principles; but, as his acquaintance with the world, and with the writings of fuch men as Watts, Fofter, Lardner, and Lowman, increased, these prejudices were greatly softened. Of the early puritans, he thought their want of general learning was atoned for by their skill in the Scriptures, and the holiness of their lives; and, to justify his opinion of them,

* Yet have there been among them a few, as eminent for their learning as their piety, and, in justice to their memory, I will mention two of this character: the one was Gataker, well known for his excellent edition of the Meditations of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, and his Commentary on the prophecy of Jeremiah; the other, a fomewhat earlier writer, old Mr. Dod, furnamed the Decalogist, an exquifite Hebrew scholar, a man of primitive sanctity, and a paffive non-conforming divine. His memory is not quite extinct among the diffenters of the prefent age, for I remember, in my youth, to have feen, in the window of an old bookseller of that denomination, a printed broad sheet, with a wooden portrait at the top thereof, intitled Mr. Dod's sayings,' being a string of religious aphorifms, intended to be stuck up in the houses of poor perfons. In Fuller's Worthies, page 181, and alfo in his Church hiftory, book xi. page 219, are fome particulars that mark his character, and in the latter, page 220, the following note of his fimplicity. He was but coarfely ufed by the cavaliers, and when the fol⚫diers, who came to plunder him, brought down the sheets out of his • chamber, into the room where he fat by the fire-fide, he, in their • abfence to search for more, took one pair, and clapped them under ⚫ his cushion whereon he fat, much pleafing himself, after their ⚫ departure, that he had, as he faid, plundered the plunderers, ⚫ and, by a lawful felony, had faved fo much of his own to himself. ⚫ He died the fame year with archbishop Laud, 1646, and with ⚫ him,' this author adds, the old puritan feemed to expire.

and

and their writings, he once cited to me a faying of Howell in one of his letters, that to make a man a complete Christian, he must have the works of a Papist, the words of a Puritan, and the faith of a Proteftant *. At times when he was moft diftreffed, I recommended to him the perufal of bifhop Taylor's Rules and

Exercises of holy Living and Dying,' and alfo, his • Ductor Dubitantium,' a book abounding in erudition, and most aptly fuiting his circumftances. Of the former, though he placed the author at the head of all the divines that have fucceeded the fathers, he faid, that in the reading thereof, he had found little more than he brought himfelf; and, at the mention of the latter, he seemed to fhrink. His Greek teftament was generally within his reach, and he red much in it. He was competently skilled in the writings of the fathers, yet was he more converfant with those of the great English church-men, namely, Hooker, Ufher, Mede, Hammond, Sanderfon, Hall, and others of that clafs. Dr. Henry More, of Cambridge, he did not much affect: he was a platonist, and, in Johnson's opinion, a vifionary. He would frequently cite from him, and laugh at, a passage to this effect: At the confummation of all things, it

fhall come to pass, that eternity fhall shake hands < with opacity.' He had never, till I mentioned

Howell's Letters, book ii. letter 11. The author must here be understood to mean proteftants of the established church, for the puritans are also proteftants. This dictum carries the more weight with it, as it comes from a man whose sentiments, respecting fectaries, may be inferred from the following paffage in another of his letters: If I hate any, it is those fchifmatics that puzzle the sweet peace of the church; fo that I could be content to fee an • Anabaptist go to Hell on a Brownift's back.' Book i. letter 32.

him, heard of Dr. Thomas Jackson, of Corpus Chrifti college, Oxon. Upon my recommendation of his works, in three folio volumes, he made me a promife to buy and study them, which he lived not to perform. He was, for fome time, pleased with Kempis's tract 'De Imitatione Chrifti,' but at length laid it afide, faying, that the main defign of it was to promote monaftic piety, and inculcate ecclefiaftical obedience. One sentiment therein, he, however, greatly applauded, and I find it adopted by bifhop Taylor, who gives it in the following words: It is no great matter to live lovingly with good-natured, with humble and meek perfons; but he that can <do fo with the froward, with the wilful, and the ignorant, with the peevish and perverse, he only hath true charity. Always remembering, that our true • folid peace, the peace of God, confifts rather in compliance with others, than in being complied with; in fuffering and forbearing, rather than in • contention and victory *.'

In the course of thefe ftudies, he exercifed his powers of eloquence, in the compofition of forms of devotion, adapted to his circumftances and the ftate of his mind at different times. Of thefe, a fpecimen has lately been given to the public. He also tranflated into Latin many of the collects in our liturgy. This was a practice which he took up in his early years, and continued through his life, as he did alfo the noting down the particular occurrences of each day thereof, but in a loose and defultory way,

* Polemical and moral discourses, folio, 1657, page 25.