JOHNSON, or Jonson, Ben, one of the most distinguished dramatic poets of the Elizabethan age, whether we consider the number or the merit of his productions. He was born at Westminster in 1574, and was educated at the public school there, under the great Camden. He was descended from a Scottish family; but as his father, who had lost his estate under Queen Mary, died before our poet was born, and his mother married a brick-layer for her second husband, Ben was taken from school to work at his father-in-law’s trade. Not being captivated with this employment, however, he went into the Low Countries, and distinguished himself in a military capacity. On his return to England, he entered himself at St John’s College, Cambridge; and having killed a person in a duel, he was condemned, and narrowly escaped execution. After this he turned actor; and Shakspeare is said to have first introduced him to the world, by recommending a play of his to the stage, after it had been rejected. His Alchymist gained him such reputation, that in 1619 he was, at the death of Mr Daniel, made poet-laureate to King James I. and master of arts at Oxford. As we do not find Jonson’s economical virtues anywhere recorded, it is the less to be wondered that, after this, we should find him petitioning King Charles, on his accession, to enlarge his father’s allowance of a hundred merks into pounds; and soon afterwards we learn that, being very poor and sick, he lodged in an obscure alley. On this occasion it was that Charles, having been moved in his favour, sent him ten guineas, upon which Ben remarked, “His majesty sent me ten guineas because I am poor, and live in an alley; go and tell him that his soul lives in an alley.” He died in August 1637, at the age of sixty-three, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The most complete edition of his works was that printed in 1756, in 7 vols. 8vo.

Johnson, Dr Samuel, one of the brightest ornaments of the eighteenth century, was born in the city of Litchfield, in Staffordshire, on the 18th of September 1709. His father Michael was a bookseller, and must have had some reputation in the city, as he more than once held the office of chief magistrate. By what casuistry he reconciled his conscience to the oaths required to be taken by all who occupy such stations cannot now be known; but it is certain that he was zealously attached to the exiled family of Stuart, and instilled the same principles into the youthful mind of his son. So earnest was he in this, and at so early a period did he commence it, that when Dr Sacheverel, in his memorable tour through England, came to Litchfield, Mr Johnson carried his son, not then quite three years of age, to the cathedral, and placed him on his shoulders, that he might see as well as hear the famous preacher.

But political prejudices were not the only doubtful qualities which young Sam inherited from his father. He derived from the same source a morbid melancholy, which, though it neither depressed his imagination, nor clouded [7:12:595]his perceptions, filled him with dreadful apprehensions of insanity, and rendered him wretched through life. From his nurse he contracted the scrofula or king’s evil, which made its appearance at a very early period, disfigured a face naturally well-formed, and deprived him of the sight of one of his eyes.

When he had arrived at a proper age for receiving grammatical instruction, he was placed in the free school of Litchfield, of which Mr Hunter was then master; a man whom his illustrious pupil thought “very severe, and wrongheadedly severe,” because he would beat a boy for not answering questions which the latter could not expect to be asked of him. He was, however, a skilful teacher; and Johnson, when he stood in the very front of learning, was sensible how much he owed to him; for upon being asked how he had acquired so accurate a knowledge of the Latin tongue, he replied, “My master beat me very well; without that, Sir, I should have done nothing.”

At the age of fifteen, Johnson was removed from Litchfield to the school of Stourbridge in Worcestershire, at which he remained little more than a year, and then returned home, where he staid two years without any settled plan of life or any regular course of study. But he read a great deal in a desultory manner, as chance threw books in his way, and as inclination directed him through them; so that when, in his nineteenth year, he was entered a commoner of Pembroke College, Oxford, his mind was stored with a variety of such knowledge as is not often acquired in universities, where boys seldom read any books but those which are put into their hands by their tutors. He had given very early proofs of his poetical genius, both in his school exercises and in other occasional compositions; but what is perhaps more remarkable, as evincing that he must have thought a good deal on a subject on which other boys of that age seldom think at all, he had, before he was fourteen, entertained doubts of the truth of revelation. From the melancholy of his temper, these naturally preyed upon his spirits, and gave him great uneasiness; but they were happily removed by a proper course of reading; for his studies being honest, ended in conviction. He found that religion was true; and what he had learned by inquiry, he ever afterwards endeavoured to teach to mankind.

Concerning his residence at the university, and the means by which he was there supported, his two principal biographers contradict each other; and hence on these points it is impossible to write with certainty. According to Sir John Haw kins, the time of his continuance at Oxford is divisible into two periods; but Mr Boswell represents it as only one period, with the usual interval of a long vacation. Sir John says that he was supported at college by Mr Andrew Corbet, in quality of assistant to his son. But Mr Boswell assures us, that though he was promised pecuniary aid by Mr Corbet, that promise was not in any degree fulfilled. With regard to the knight’s account of this transaction, it seems to be inconsistent with itself. He says, that the two young men were entered in Pembroke on the same day; that Corbet continued in the college two years; but that Johnson was driven home in little more than one year, because, by the removal of Corbet, he was deprived of his pension. A story of which one part contradicts the other cannot be wholly true. Sir John adds, that “meeting with another source, the bounty, as is supposed, of some one or more of the members of the cathedral of Litchfield, he returned to college, and made up the whole of his residence in the university about three years.” Mr Boswell has told us nothing more than that Johnson, though his father was unable to support him, continued three years in college, and that he was then driven from it by extreme poverty.

These gentlemen differ likewise in their accounts of Johnson’s tutors. Sir John Hawkins says that he had two, Mr Jordan and Dr Adams. Mr Boswell affirms that Dr Adams could not be his tutor, because Jordan did not quit the college till 1731, the year in the autumn of which Johnson himself was compelled to leave Oxford. Yet the same author represents Dr Adams as saying, “I was Johnson’s nominal tutor, but he was above my mark ;” a speech of which it is not easy to discover the meaning, if it formed no part of Johnson’s duty to attend upon Adams’s prelections. In most colleges we believe there are two tutors in different departments of education; and therefore it is not improbable that Jordan and Adams may have been at the same time tutors to Johnson, the one in languages, and the other in science. Jordan was a man of such mean abilities, that though his pupil loved him for the goodness of his heart, he would often risk the payment of a small fine rather than attend his prelections; nor was he studious to conceal the reason of his absence. Upon occasion of one such imposition, Johnson is reported to have said, “Sir, you have sconced me twopence for non-attendance at a lecture not worth a penny.” For some transgression or absence his tutor imposed upon him, as a Christmas exercise, the task of translating into Latin verse Pope’s Messiah. This Johnson performed, and on his translation being shown to the author of the original, the latter, after perusal, returned it with this observation, “The writer of this poem will leave it a question for posterity, wdιether his or mine be the original.” The particular course of his reading whilst in college, and during the vacation which he passed at home, cannot be traced. That at this period he read much, we have his own evidence in what he afterwards told the king; but his mode of study was never regular, and at all times he thought more than he read. He informed Mr Boswell, that what he read solidly at Oxford was Greek, and that the study of which he was fondest was that of metaphysics.

In the year 1731 Johnson left the university without a degree; and as his father, who died in the month of December of that year, had suffered great misfortunes in trade, he was driven out as a commoner of nature, and excluded from the regular modes of profit and prosperity. Having therefore not only a profession, but the means of subsistence, to seek, he, in the month of March 1732, accepted an invitation to the office of under-master of a free school at Market-Bosworth, in Leicestershire; but not knowing, as he said, whether it was more disagreeable for him to teach or for the boys to learn the rules of grammar, and being likewise disgusted at the treatment which he had received from the patron of the school, he in a few months relinquished a situation which he ever afterwards recollected with horror. Being thus again without any fixed employment, and with very little money in his pocket, be translated Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia, for the trifling sum, it is said, of five guineas, which he received from a bookseller in Birmingham. This was the first attempt which he made to procure pecuniary assistance by means of his pen; and it must have held forth very little encouragement to his commencing author by profession.

In 1735, being then in his twenty-sixth year, he married Mrs Porter, the widow of a mercer in Birmingham; a woman whose age was almost double his, whose external form had never been captivating, and whose fortune amounted to scarcely L.800. That she had a superiority of understanding and talents, is extremely probable, both because she certainly inspired him with a more than ordinary passion, and because she was herself so delighted with the charms of his conversation as to overlook his external disadvantages, which were many and great. He now set up a private academy, for which purpose he had hired a large house, well situated, near his native city; but his name having then nothing of that celebrity which afterwards commanded the [7:12:596]attention and respect of the world, this undertaking did not succeed. The only pupils who are known to have been placed under his care, were the celebrated David Garrick, his brother George Garrick, and a young gentleman of fortune, of the name of Offely. He kept this academy only a year and a half; and it was during the period in question that he constructed the plan and wrote the greater part of his tragedy of Irene.

The respectable character of his parents, and his own merit, had secured him a kind reception in the best families at Litchfield; and he was particularly distinguished by Mr Walmsley, registrar of the ecclesiastical court, a man of great worth, and of extensive and various erudition. That gentleman, upon hearing part of Irene read, thought so highly of Johnson’s abilities as a dramatic writer, that he advised him by all means to complete the tragedy and produce it on the stage. To men of genius the stage holds forth temptations almost irresistible. The profits arising from a tragedy, including the representation and printing of it, and the connections which it sometimes enables the author to form, were in Johnson’s imagination inestimable. Flattered, it may be supposed, with these hopes, he, in the year 1737, set out for London, with his pupil David Garrick, leaving Mrs Johnson to take care of the house and the wreck of her fortune. The two adventurers carried with them from Mr Walmsley an earnest recommendation to the Reverend Mr Colson, then master of an academy, and afterwards Lucasian professor of mathematics in the university of Cambridge; but from that gentleman it does not appear that Johnson ever found either protection or encouragement.

How he spent his time upon his arrival in London is not particularly known. His tragedy was refused by the managers of the day; and for some years the Gentleman’s Magazine seems to have been his principal resource for employment and support. To enumerate his various communications to that miscellaoy would be equally tedious and unnecessary. It is sufficient to say, that his connection with Cave the proprietor became very close; that he wrote prefaces, essays, reviews of books, and poems; and that he was occasionally employed in correcting the papers written by other correspondents. When the complaints of the nation against the administration of Sir Robert Walpole became loud, and on the 13th of February 1740 a motion was made to remove him from his majesty’s counsels for ever, Johnson was pitched upon by Cave to write what was in the Magazine entitled “Debates in the Senate of Lilliput,” but was understood to be the speeches of the most eminent members in both houses of parliament. These orations, which induced Voltaire to compare British with ancient eloquence, were hastily sketched by Johnson whilst he was not yet thirty-two years of age, but little acquainted with life, and struggling, not for distinction, but for existence. Perhaps in none of his writings has he given a more conspicuous proof of a mind prompt and vigorous almost beyond conception. They were composed from scanty notes taken by illiterate persons employed to attend in both houses; and sometimes he had nothing communicated to him but the names of the several speakers, and the part which they took in the debate.

His separate publications which at this time attracted the greatest notice were, London, a poem in imitation of Juvenal’s third Satire; Marmor Norfolciense, or an Essay on an ancient prophetical Inscription in Monkish Rhyme, discovered near Lynne, in Norfolk; and a complete Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage from the malicious and scandalous aspersions of Mr Brook, author of Gustavus Vasa. The poem, which was published in 1738, by Dodsley, is universally known and admired as the most spirited instance in the English language of ancient sentiments adapted to modern topics. Pope, who then filled the poetical throne without a rival, being informed that the author’s name was Johnson, and that he was an obscure person, replied, “He will soon be deterre! The two pamphlets, which were published in 1739, are filled with keen satire on the government. Sir John Hawkins has thought fit to declare that they display neither learning nor wit; but Pope was of a different opinion; for in a note of his preserved by Mr Boswell, he says, that “the whole of the Norfolk prophecy is very humorous.”

Mrs Johnson, who went to London soon after her husband, now lived sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, sometimes in the city and sometimes at Greenwich; but Johnson himself was offener to be found at St John’s Gate, where the Gentleman’s Magazine was published, than in his own lodgings. It was there that he became acquainted with Savage, with whom he was induced, probably by the similarity of their circumstances, to contract a very close friendship; and such were their extreme necessities, that they often wandered duringwhole nights in the street, for want of money to procure them a lodging. In one of these nocturnal rambles, when their distress was almost incredible, so far were they from being depressed by their situation, that, in high spirits and brimful of patriotism, they traversed St James’s Square for several hours, inveighed against the minister, and, as Johnson said in ridicule of himself, his companion, and all such pennyless patriots, “resolved that they would stand by their country.” In 1744, he published the life of his unfortunate companion; a work which, had he never written any thing else, would have placed him very high in the rank of authors. His narrative is remarkably smooth and well disposed; his observations are just, and his reflections disclose the inmost recesses of the human heart. But, to say nothing of the pretended birth of Savage, whom Mr Boswell considered as an impostor, the moral character of this person was undoubtedly unworthy of such a biographer; and it is not easy to discover any thing either in his intellectual or poetical qualifications which could reasonably have entitled him to the prominent place amongst English poets which the partiality of Johnson has assigned to his companion in misfortune.

In 1749, when Drury-lane theatre was opened under the management of Garrick, Johnson wrote for the occasion a prologue, which, for just dramatic criticism, as well as poetical excellence, is confessedly unrivalled. This year is also distinguished in his life as the epoch when his arduous and important work, the Dictionary of the English Language, was announced to the world by the publication of its plan or prospectus, addressed to the Earl of Chesterfield. From that nobleman Johnson was certainly led to expect patronage and encouragement; and it seems equally certain that his lordship expected, when the book made its appearance, to be honoured with the dedication. But the expectations of both were disappointed. Lord Chesterfield, after once or twice seeing the lexicorapher, suffered him to be repulsed from his door; but afterwards thinking to conciliate him when the work was upon the eve of publication, he wrote two papers in The World, warmly recommending it to the public. This artifice was seen through; and Johnson, in very polite language, rejected his lordship’s advances, letting him know that he was unwilling the public should consider him as owing that to a patron which Providence had enabled him to do for himself. This great and laborious work its author expected to complete in three years; but he was certainly employed upon it seven years; for we know that it was begun in 1747, and that the last sheet was sent to the press in the end of the year 1754. When we consider the nature of the undertaking, it is indeed astonishing that it was finished so soon, since it was writ [7:12:597]ten, as he says, “with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow.” The sorrow to which he here alludes is probably that which he felt for the loss of his wife, who died in March 1752, and the loss of whom he continued to lament as long as he lived.

The Dictionary did not occupy his whole time; for whilst he was pushing it forward, he fitted his tragedy for the stage, wrote the lives of several eminent men for the Gentleman’s Magazine, published an Imitation of the tenth Satire of Juvenal, entitled the Vanity of human Wishes, and began and finished The Rambler. This last work is so well known, that it is hardly necessary to say that it was a periodical paper, published twice a week, from the 20th of March 1750 to the 14th of March 1752 inclusive; but to convey some notion of the vigour and promptitude of the author’s mind, it may not be improper to observe, that notwithstanding the severity of his other labours, all the assistance which he received did not amount to five papers; and that many of the most masterly of these essays were written on the spur of the occasion, and were never seen entire by the author till they returned to him from the press.

Soon after the Rambler was concluded, Dr Hawkesworth projected The Adventurer, upon a similar plan; and, by the assistance of friends, he was enabled to carry it on with almost equal merit. For a short time, indeed, it was the more popular work of the two; and the papers with the signature T, which are confessedly the most splendid in the whole collection, are now known to have been communicated by Johnson, who received for each the sum of two guineas. This was double the price for which he sold sermons to such clergymen as either would not or could not compose their own discourses; indeed he seems to have made a kind of trade of sermon-writing.

Though, during the time that he was employed on the Dictionary, he had exhausted more than the sum for which the booksellers had bargained as the price of the copy, yet, by means of the Rambler, Adventurer, sermons, and other productions of his pen, he now found himself in greater affluence than he had ever before been; and as the powers of his mind, distended by long and severe exercise, required relaxation to restore them to their proper tone, he appears to have done little or nothing from the close of the Adventurer till the year 1756, when he undertook the office of reviewer in the Literary Magazine. Of his reviews, by far the most valuable is that of Soame Jenyns’s Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil. Never were wit and metaphysical acuteness more closely united than in that criticism, which exposes the weakness and holds up to contempt the reasonings of those vain mortals who presumptuously attempt to grasp the scale of existence, and to form plans of conduct for the Creator of the universe. But the furnishing of magazines, reviews, and even newspapers, with literary intelligence, and authors of books with dedications and prefaces, was considered as an employment unworthy of Johnson. It was therefore proposed by the booksellers that he should give a new edition of the dramas of Shakspeare; a work which he had projected many years before, and of which he had published a specimen which was commended by Warburton. When one of his friends expressed a hope that this employment would furnish him with amusement, and add to his fame, he replied, “I look upon it as I did upon the Dictionary; it is all work; and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.” He issued proposals, however, of considerable length, i∏ which he showed that he knew perfectly what a variety of research such an undertaking required; but his indolence prevented him from pursuing it with diligence, and it was not published till many years afterwards.

On the 15th of April 1785, he began a new periodical paper entitled The Idler, which came out every Saturday, in a weekly newspaper called the Universal Chronicle, or Weckly Gazette, published by Newberry. Of these essays, which were continued till the 5th of April 1760, many were written as hastily as an ordinary letter; and one in particular, composed at Oxford, was begun only half an hour before the departure of the post which carried it to London. About this time he had the offer of a living, of which he might have rendered himself capable by entering into orders. It was a rectory, in a pleasant country, of such yearly value as would have been an object to one in much better circumstances; but, sensible, as is supposed, of the asperity of his temper, he declined it, saying, “I have not the requisites for the office, and I cannot in my conscience shear the flock which I am unable to feed.”

In the month of January 1759, his mother died, at the advanced age of ninety; an event which deeply affected him, and gave birth to the forty-first paper in the Idler, in which he laments, that “the life which made his own life pleasant was at an end, and that the gate of death was shut upon his prospects.” Soon afterwards he wrote his Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, that with the profits he might defray the expense of his mother’s funeral, and pay some debts which she had left. He told a friend that he received for the copy L.100, and L.25 more when it came to a second edition; that he wrote it in the evenings of a week, sent it to the press in portions as it was written, and had. never since read it.

Hitherto, notwithstanding his varions publications, he was poor, and obliged to provide by his labour for the wants of the day that was passing over him; but having been, early in 1762, represented to the king as a very learned and good man, without any certain provision, his majesty was pleased to grant him a pension, which Lord Bute, then first minister, assured him, “was not given for any thing which he was to do, but for what he had already done.” But a fixed annuity of three hundred pounds, if it diminished his distress, increased his indolence; for as he constantly avowed that he had no other motive in writing than to gain money, as he had now what was abundantly sufficient for all his purposes, and as he delighted in conversation, and was visited and admired by the witty, the elegant, and the learned, very little of his time was passed in solitary study. Solitude was indeed his aversion; and, that he might avoid it as much as possible, Sir Joshua Reynolds and he, in 1764, instituted a club, which existed long without a name, but was afterwards known by the title of the Literary Club. It consisted of some of the most enlightened men of the age, who met at the Turk’s Head in Gerard Street, Soho, one evening in every week, at seven, and till a late hour enjoyed “the feast of reason and the flow of soul.”

In 1765, when Johnson was more than usually oppressed with constitutional melancholy, he was fortunately introduced into the family of Mr Thrale, one of the most eminent brewers in England, and member of parliament for the borough of Southwark; and it is but justice to acknowledge, that to the assistance which Mr and Mrs Thrale gave him, to the shelter which their house afforded him for sixteen or seventeen years, and to the pains which they took to soothe or repress his uneasy fancies, the public is probably indebted for some of the most masterly as well as the most popular works which he ever produced. At length, in the October of this year, he gave to the world his edition of Shakspeare, which is chiefly valuable for the preface, where the excellencies and defects of that immortal bard are displayed with a judgment which must please every man whose taste is not regulated by the stand [7:12:598]ard of fashion or national prejudice, and where the question of the unities is discussed with an ability and force of reasoning which leaves nothing to be added or desired on the subject. In 1767 he was honoured by a private conversation with the king, in the library at the queen’s house; and two years afterwards, upon the establishment of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, he was nominated professor of ancient literature; an office merely honorary, and conferred on him, as is supposed, at the recommendation of his friend the president.

In the variety of subjects on which he had hitherto exercised his pen, he had forborne, since the administration of Sir Robert Walpole, to meddle with the disputes of contending factions; but having seen with indignation the methods which, in the business of Mr Wilkes, were taken to work upon the populace, he published in 1770 a pamphlet, entitled The False Alarm, in which he asserts, and labours to prove by a variety of arguments founded on precedents, that the expulsion of a member of the House of Commons is equivalent to exclusion, and that no such calamity as the subversion of the constitution was to be feared from an act warranted by usage, and conformable to the law of parliament. Whatever may be thought of the principles maintained in this publication, it unquestionably contains much wit and argument, expressed in the author’s best style of composition; and yet it is known to have been written between eight o’clock on Wednesday night and twelve o’clock on the Thursday night, when it was read to Mr Thrale upon his return from the House of Commons. In 1771 he published another political pamphlet, entitled Thoughts on the Late Transactions respecting Falkland’s Islands, in which he attacked Junius ; and he ever afterwards delighted himself with the thought of having vanquished that able writer, whom he certainly rivalled in nervous language and pointed ridicule.

In 1773, he, in company with Mr Boswell, visited some of the most considerable of the Hebrides or Western Islands of Scotland, and published an account of his journey, in a volume which abounds in extensive philosophical views of society, ingenious sentiments, and lively descriptions, but which offended many persons by the vehement attack which it contained on the authenticity of the poems attributed to Ossian. For the degree of offence that was taken, the book can hardly be thought to contain a sufficient reason; and if the antiquity or genuineness of these poems be yet doubted, this is owing more to the conduct of their editor than to the violence of Johnson. In 1774<, the parliament being dissolved, he addressed to the electors of Great Britain a pamphlet, entitled The Patriot; of which the design was to guard them from 'imposition, and teach tham to distinguish true from false patriotism. In 1775 he published Taxation no Tyranny, in Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress. In this performance his admirer Mr Boswell cannot, he says, perceive that ability of argument or felicity of expression for which on other occasions Johnson was remarkable. This seems a singular criticism. To the assumed principle upon which the reasoning of the pamphlet rests many have objected, and perhaps their objections arc well founded; but if it be admitted that “the supreme power of every community has the right of requiring from all its subjects such contributions as are necessary to the public safety or public prosperity,” it will be found a difficult task to break the chain of argument by which it is proved that the British parliament had a right to tax the Americans. As to the style of the pamphlet, the reader who adopts the maxim recorded in the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, that a controversialist “ought not to strike soft in battle,” must acknowledge that it is uncommonly happy, and that the whole performance is one of the most brilliant as well as correct pieces of composition that ever fell from the pen of its author. These essays drew upon him numerous attacks, all of which he heartily despised; for though it has been supposed that a Letter addressed to Dr Samuel Johnson occasioned by his Political Publications, gave him great uneasiness, the contrary is manifest, from his having, after the appearance of that letter, collected them into a volume under the title of Political Tracts by the Author of the Rambler. In 1765 Trinity College, Dublin, had created him doctor of laws by diploma; and he now received the same honour from the University of Oxford, an honour with which, though he did not boast of it, he was highly gratified. ∙ In 1777 he was induced, by a case of an extraordinary nature, to exercise that humanity which in him was obedient to every call. Dr William Dodd, a clergyman, under sentence of death for the crime of forgery, found means to interest Johnson in his behalf, and procured from him two of the most energetic compositions ever written; the one being a petition from himself to the king, and the other a similar address from his wife to the queen. But these petitions failed of success. Lord Mansfield’s opinion was unfavourable to Dodd, and the reverend forger underwent the last punishment of the law.

The principal booksellers in London having determined to publish a body of English poetry, Johnson was prevailed upon to write the lives of the poets, and give a character of the works of each. This task he undertook with alacrity, and upon the whole executed it in a manner worthy of his reputation. The work was published in ten small volumes, of which the first four appeared in 1778, and the others in 1781. Whilst the world in general was filled with admiration of the great powers of the man who at the age of seventy-two, and labouring under a complication of diseases, could produce a work which displays so much genius and learning, there were narrow circles in which prejudice and resentment were fostered, and whence attacks of different sorts issued against him. But these gave him not the smallest disturbance. When told of the feeble though shrill outcry that had been raised, he replied, “Sir, I considered myself as intrusted with a certain portion of truth. I have given my opinion sincerely; let them show where they think me wrong.”

He had hardly begun to reap the laurels gained by this performance, when death deprived him of Mr Thrale, in whose house he had enjoyed the most comfortable hours of his life; but it abated not in Johnson that care for the interests of those whom his friend had left behind him, and whom he thought himself bound to cherish, in duty as one of the executors of his will, and in gratitude for the kindness he had experienced at his hands. On this account, his visits to Streatham, Mr Thrale’s villa, were for some time after his death regularly made on Monday, and protracted till Saturday, as they had been during his life; but they soon became less frequent, and at length he studiously avoided the mention of the place or the family. Mrs Thrale, who ere long changed her name for that of Mrs Piozzi, says, indeed, that “it grew extremely perplexing and difficult to live in the house with him when the master of it was no more, because his dislikes grew capricious, and he could scarce bear to have any body come to the house whom it was absolutely necessary for her to see.” The person whom she thought it most necessary for her to see may perhaps be guessed at without any extraordinary share of sagacity; and if these were the visits which Johnson could not bear, posterity, so far from thinking his dislikes capricious, though they may have been perplexing, would, if he had acted otherwise, have blamed him for the want of gratitude to the friend whose “face for fifteen years had never been turned upon him but with respect or benignity.”

About the middle of June 1783, his constitution sustained a severer shock than it had ever before experienced, [7:12:599]from a stroke of the palsy, which was so sudden and so violent, that it awakened him out of a sound sleep, and rendered him for a short time speechless. As usual, he had recourse, under this affliction, to piety, which in him was constant, sincere, and fervent. He tried to repeat the Lord’s prayer, first in English, then in Latin, and afterwards in Greek; but succeeded only in the last attempt, immediately after which he was again deprived of the power of articulation. From this alarming attack he in a short time recovered, but it left behind it presages of a dropsical affection; and he was soon afterwards seized with a spasmodic asthma of such violence that he was confined to the house in great pain, whilst his dropsy increased, notwithstanding all the efforts of the most eminent physicians. He had, however, such an interval of ease as enabled him, in the summer of 1784·, to visit his friends at Oxford, Litchfield, and Ashbourne in Derbyshire. One day the Roman Catholic religion being introduced as the topic of conversation when he was in the house of Dr Adams, Johnson said, “If yôu join the Papists externally, they will not interrogate you strictly as to your belief in their tenets. No reasoning Papist believes every article of their faith. There is one side on which a good man might be persuaded to embrace it. A good man of a timorous disposition, in great doubt of his acceptance with God, and pretty credulous, might be glad of a church where there are so many helps to go to heaven. I would be a Papist if I could. I have fear enough; but an obstinate rationality prevents me. I should never be a Papist unless on the near approach of death, of which I have very great terror.” His constant dread of death was indeed so great, that it astonished all who had access to know the piety of his mind and the virtues of his life. Attempts have been made to account for it in various ways; but that probably is the true account which is given by an elegant and pious writer, in the Olla Podrida. “That he should not be conscious of the abilities with which Providence had blessed him was impossible. He felt his own powers; he felt what he was capable of having performed; and he saw how little, comparatively speaking, he had performed. Hence his apprehension on the near prospect of the account to be made, viewed through the medium of constitutional and morbid melancholy, which often excluded from his sight the bright beams of divine mercy.” This, however, was the case only whilst death was approaching from a distance. From the time that he was certain it was near, all his fears were calmed; and he died on the 13th of December 1784, full of resignation strengthened by faith, and joyful in hope.

Dr Johnson was a man of herculean form of body, as well as of great powers of mind. His stature was tall, his limbs were large, his strength was more than common, and his activity in early life had been greater than such a form gave reason to expect; but he was subject to an infirmity of the convulsive kind, resembling the distemper called St Vitus’s dance; and he had the seeds of so many diseases sown in his constitution, that a short time before his death he declared that he hardly remembered to have passed one day wholly free from pain. He possessed extraordinary powers of understanding, which were much cultivated by reading, and still more by meditation and reflection. His memory was retentive, his imagination vigorous, and his judgment penetrating. He read with great rapidity, retained with wonderful exactness what he so easily collected, and possessed the power of reducing to order and system the scattered hints on any subject which he had gathered from different books. It would not be safe to claim for him the highest place amongst his contemporaries in any single department of literature; but he brought more mind to every subject, and had a greater variety of knowledge ready for all occasions, than any other man that could easily be named. Though prone to superstition, he was in other respects so incredulous, that Hogarth observed, whilst Johnson firmly believed the Bible, he seemed determined to believe nothing but the Bible. Of the importance of religion he had a strong sense; his zeal for its interests was always awake, whilst profaneness of every kind was abashed in his presence. The same energy which he displayed in his literary productions, or even greater, was exhibited also in his conversation, which was various, striking, and instructive. Like the sage in Rasselas, he spoke, and attention watched his lips; be reasoned, and conviction closed his period. When he pleased, he could be the greatest sophist that ever contended in the lists of declamation; and perhaps no man ever equalled him in nervous and pointed repartees. His veracity, from the most trivial to the most solemn occasions, was strict even to severity. He scorned to embellish a story with fictitious circumstances; for what is not a representation of reality, he used to say, is not worthy of our attention. As his purse and his house were ever open to the indigent, so was his heart tender to those who wanted relief, and his soul susceptible of gratitude, and every kind impression. He had a roughness in his manner which subdued the saucy and terrified the meek; but it was only in his manner, for no man was more loved than Johnson by those who knew him; and his works will be read with admiration as long as the language in which they are written shall be understood.