mathematical part by Mr. Gordon, in the botanical by the famous gardener Philip Miller, and in the etymological by Mr. Lediard, a profeffor of the modern languages, it was published in a folio fize. The last improvement of it was by Dr. Jofeph Nicoll Scott, who, of a diffenting teacher had become a phyfician and a writer for the bookfellers.

Johnson, who before this time, together with his wife, had lived in obfcurity, lodging at different houses in the courts and alleys in and about the Strand and Fleet street, had, for the purpose of carrying on this arduous work, and being near the printers employed in it, taken a handfome houfe in Gough fquare, and fitted up a room in it with desks and other accommodations for amanuenfes, who, to the number of five or fix, he kept conftantly under his eye. An interleaved copy of Bailey's dictionary in folio he made the repofitory of the feveral articles, and thefe he collected by inceffant reading the beft authors in our language, in the practice whereof, his method was to fcore with a black-lead pencil the words by him felected, and give them over to his affiftants to infert in their places. The books he used for this purpose were what he had in his own collection, a copious but a miferably ragged one, and all fuch as he could borrow; which latter, if ever they came back to those that lent them, were fo defaced as to be fcarce worth owning, and yet, fome of his friends were glad to receive and entertain them as curiofities.

It seems that Johnfon had made a confiderable progrefs in his work when he was informed, that the earl of Chefterfield had heard and fpoken favourably of his defign. He had never till this time experienced

enced the patronage of any other than booksellers, and though he had but an indiftinct idea of that of a nobleman, a reputed wit, and an accomplished courtier, and doubted whether he was to rate it among the happy incidents of his life, it might mean a liberal prefent or an handsome pension to encourage him in the profecution of the work; he therefore refolved not to reject it by a fupercilious comparison of his own talents with those of his lordship, or to flight a favour which he was not able to estimate. Accordingly, he in the year 1747, drew up and dedicated to lord Chesterfield, then a secretary of state, a plan of his dictionary, the manufcript whereof he delivered to Mr. Whitehead the late laureat, who undertook to convey it to his lordship, but he having communicated it firft to another perfon, it paffed through other hands before it reached that to which it was immediately directed: the refult was an invitation from lord Chesterfield to the author.

:

Never could there be a stronger contraft of characters than this interview produced: a fcholar and a courtier, the one ignorant of the forms and modes of addrefs, the other, to an affected degree, accomplished in both the one in a manly and fententious ftile directing his discourse to a weighty subject; the other dreading to incur the imputation of pedantry, and by the interpofition of compliments and the introduction of new topics as artfully endeavouring to evade it. The acquaintance thus commenced was never improved into friendship. What his lordship thought of Johnson we may learn from his letters to an illegi timate fon, now extant*. Johnson was fo little pleafed

Letter 220.

with his once fuppofed patron, that he forbore not ever after to speak of him in terms of the greatest contempt.

How far Johnson was right in his opinion of this popular nobleman, or whether he is to be fufpected of having refented more than he ought to have done, the coldness of his reception, or the disappointment of his hopes, will beft appear by a furvey of his charactér, as it arifes out of the memoirs of his life prefixed to his mifcellaneous works, and the fentiments and principles which, for the inftruction of his fon, he, in a course of letters to him, from time to time communicated, and with the utmolt folicitude laboured to inculcate and enforce.

His lordship's defcent was from an illuftrious, though not a very ancient family. Being, as himself relates, rather neglected by his father, and in his tender years bereft of his mother, the care of his education devolved on his grandmother, the marchioness of Halifax, a woman of exemplary virtue and diferetion, who fearing, perhaps, the contagion of a public feminary, kept him in her family, and with the best affiftance of inftructors that she could procure, conferred on him all the benefits that could be hoped for in a course of domeftic education.

At the age of eighteen he was fent to Trinity hall, Cambridge, where, as he informs us, he had a great deal of business on his hands, for he spent above an hour every day in ftudying the civil law, and as much in philofophy, and attended the mathematical lectures of the blind man (profeffor Saunderson) fo that, adds he, I am now fully employed. But notwithstanding

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withstanding this intense application to his ftudies, this hopeful young nobleman seems to have brought from the university less of what all fuch seminaries profess to teach, found learning and good morals, than a hatred of that pedantry and illiberality of manners, which, throughout his writings, he reprobates as the infeparable concomitant of all academical inftitutions.

As I have not taken upon me the office of his lordfhip's biographer, I fhall content myself with mentioning only those circumstances of his life and conduct that may serve to difplay his genuine character, and enable the world to determine whether it was fuch a one as a wife man would chufe as a model for imitation, or the standard by which he would form his own.

After about two years ftay at the university, lord Stanhope, for that was then his only title, went abroad to travel, and at that enchanting place the Hague, began to be acquainted with the world. The college ruft, which, if we may believe his panegyrift, he contracted in the univerfity during fo long a refidence there, he found means to rub off, and exchanged for the polish of gaming, which rendered him the dupe of knaves and sharpers almoft throughout his life, and this not from any real propensity to this pernicious vice, arifing either from avarice or the exercise of those mental powers that make it a delight to many, but to acquire, what throughout his life he feems to have above all things been defirous of, the infipid character of a man of fashion.

Nature, it must be owned, had endowed him with fine parts, and these he cultivated with all the industry ufually practifed by fuch as prefer the femblance of

what

what is really fit, juft, lovely, honourable, to the qualities themselves; thus he had eloquence without learning, complaifance without friendship, and gallantry without love.

Not much to his honour, he, in the year 1715, fuffered himself to be chofen for a Cornish borough, and took his feat in the house of commons, at an age when it was in the power of any fingle member, by the speaking of a very few words, to have turned him out of it. Upon a hint of his incapacity, occafioned by a pert fpeech of his making, he had the prudence to quit the house and retire to Paris, glad of an opportunity of finishing his noviciate in a city that abounded with those pleasures and amusements that beft fuit with a mind to which study and the rational exercise of its faculties are labour.

Upon the death of his father in 1726, he fucceeded His to his title, and his feat in the house of peers. speeches in that affembly, which were, though flimfy, florid, gave him, as that species of eloquence will ever do, the reputation of a fine orator; and in this he was fo confident, that he has not fcrupled to confefs, that he has spoken with great applause, as on the bill for reforming the calendar, on fubjects that he understood not, For my own part,' fays he, I could just as foon have talked Celtic or Sclavonian to them (the < lords) as aftronomy, and they would have understood ⚫ me full as well; fo I refolved to do better than speak

to the purpose, and to please instead of informing. ⚫ them ;'* and for this he gives as a reafon, what perhaps will be found to be a true one, that every nu

Letters to his fon, number 215.

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merous