imitation of Juvenal, London, a satire, was the first of his works which drew the attention of the public; yet, neither its celebrity, nor that of its more brilliant successor, the Vanity of Human Wishes, the deep and pathetic morality of which has often extracted tears from those whose eyes wander dry over pages professedly sentimental, could save the poet from the irksome drudgery of a writer of all work. His tragedy of Irene was unfortunate on the stage, and his valuable hours were consumed in obscure labour. He was fortunate, however, in a strong and virtuous power of thinking, which prevented his plunging into those excesses, in which neglected genius, in catching at momentary gratification, is so apt to lose character and respectability. While his friend, Savage, was wasting considerable powers in temporary gratification, Johnson was advancing slowly but surely into a higher class of society. The powers of his pen were supported by those of his conversation; he lost no friend by misconduct, no respect by a closer approach to intimacy, and each new friend whom he made, continued still his admirer.

The booksellers, also, were sensible of his value as a literary labourer, and employed him in that laborious and gigantic task, a Dictionary of the language. How it is executed is well known, and sufficiently surprising, considering that the learned author was a stranger to the Northern languages,

must fill the sheet before he saw the tablecloth. He might indeed have knocked down Osbourne for a blockhead, but he would not have knocked him down with a folio of his own wri ting."-CUMBERLAND.]

on which English is radically grounded, and that the discoveries in grammar, since made by Horne Tooke, were then unknown. In the meantime, the publication of the Rambler, though not very successful during its progress, stamped the character of the author as one of the first moral writers of the age, and as eminently qualified to write, and even to improve, the English language.

In 1752, Johnson was deprived of his wife, a loss which he appears to have felt most deeply. After her death, society, the best of which was now open to a man who brought such stores to increase its pleasures, seems to have been his principal enjoyment, and his great resource when assailed by that malady of mind which embittered his solitary moments.

The Idler, scarcely so popular as the Rambler, followed in 1758. In 1759, Rasselas was hastily composed, in order to pay the expenses of his mother's funeral, and some small debts which she had contracted. This beautiful tale was written in one week, and sent in portions to the printer. Johnson told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he never afterwards read it over! The publishers paid the author a hundred pounds, with twenty-four more, when the work came to a second edition.

The mode in which Rasselas was composed, and the purposes for which it was written, show that the author's situation was still embarrassed. But his circumstances became more easy in 1762, when a pension of L.300 placed him beyond the drudgery of labouring for mere subsistence. It was distinctly explained, that this grant was made on

public grounds alone, and intended as homage to Johnson's services for literature. But two political pamphlets, The False Alarm, and that upon the Falkland Islands, afterwards showed that the author was grateful.

In 1765, pushed forward by the satire of Churchill, Johnson published his subscription Shakspeare, for which proposals had been long in circulation.

The author's celebrated Journey to the Hebrides was published in 1775. Whatever might be his prejudices against Scotland, its natives must concede, that his remarks concerning the poverty and barrenness of the country, tended to produce those subsequent exertions, which have done much to remedy the causes of reproach. The Scots were angry because Johnson was not enraptured with their scenery, which, from a defect of bodily organs, he could not appreciate, or even see ;1 and they appear to have set rather too high a rate on the hospitality paid to a stranger, when they contended it should shut the mouth of a literary traveller upon all subjects but those of panegyric. Dr Johnson took a better way of repaying the civilities he received, by exercising kindness and hospitality in London to all such friends as he had received attention from in Scotland.

1 [Miss Reynolds, who knew him longer, and saw him more constantly than Mr Boswell, says, " Dr Johnson's sight was so very defective, that he could scarely distinguish the face of his most intimate acquaintance at half a yard; and, in general, it was observable, that his critical remarks on dress, &c., were the result of very close inspection of the object, partly from curiosity, and partly from a desire of exciting admiration of his perspicuity, of which he was not a little ambitious."-CROKER, vol. iii., p. 286.]

His pamphlet, entitled Taxation no Tyranny, which drew upon him much wrath from those who supported the American cause, is written in a strain of high toryism, and tended to promote an event, pregnant with much good and evil, the separation of the mother country from the American colonies.

In 1777, he was engaged in one of his most pleasing, as well as most popular works, The Lives of the British Poets, which he executed with a degree of critical force and talent which has seldom been concentrated.1

Johnson's laborious and distinguished career terminated in 1783, when virtue was deprived of a steady supporter, society of a brilliant ornament, and literature of a successful cultivator. The latter part of his life was honoured with general applause, for none was more fortunate in obtaining and preserving the friendship of the wise and the worthy. Thus loved and venerated, Johnson might have been pronounced happy. But Heaven, in whose eyes strength is weakness, permitted his faculties to be clouded occasionally with that morbid affection of the spirits, which disgraced his talents by prejudices, and his manners by rudeness.

When we consider the rank which Dr Johnson held, not only in literature, but in society, we cannot help figuring him to ourselves as the benevolent giant of some fairy tale, whose kindnesses and courtesies are still mingled with a part of the rug

1 [" Johnson strips many a leaf from every laurel. Still, Johnson's is the finest critical work extant, and can never be read without instruction and delight."-BYRON, vol. vi., p.

ged ferocity imputed to the fabulous sons of Anak; or rather, perhaps, like a Roman Dictator, fetched from his farm, whose wisdom and heroism still relished of his rustic occupation. And there were times when, with all Johnson's wisdom, and all his wit, this rudeness of disposition, and the sacrifices and submissions which he unsparingly exacted, were so great, that even his kind and devoted admirer, Mrs Thrale, seems at length to have thought that the honour of being Johnson's hostess was almost counterbalanced by the tax which he exacted on her time and patience.

The cause of those deficiencies in temper and manners, was no ignorance of what was fit to be done in society, or how far each individual ought to suppress his own wishes in favour of those with whom he associates; for, theoretically, no man understood the rules of good-breeding better than Dr Johnson, or could act more exactly in conformity with them, when the high rank of those with whom he was in company for the time required that he should put the necessary constraint upon himself. But during the greater part of his life, he had been in a great measure a stranger to the higher society, in which such restraint is necessary; and it may be fairly presumed, that the indulgence of a variety of little selfish peculiarities, which it is the object of good-breeding to suppress, became thus familiar to him. The consciousness of his own mental superiority in most companies which he frequented, contributed to his dogmatism; and when he had attained his eminence as a dictator in literature, like other potentates, he was not averse