nor a single ray of that genius which has since speeches, are well known, and universally ad blazed forth; but, as they have lately been re-mired. The whole has been collected in two printed, the reader, who wishes to gratify his curiosity, is referred to the fourteenth volume of Johnson's works, published by Stockdale. The lives of Boerhaave, Blake, Barratier, Father Paul, and others, were about that time, printed in the Gentleman's Magazine. The subscription of fifty pounds a year for Savage was completed and in July 1739, Johnson parted with the companion of his midnight hours never to see him more. The separation was, perhaps, an advantage to him, who wanted to make a right use of his time, and even then beheld with self-reproach the waste occasioned by dissipation. His abstinence from wine and strong liquors began soon after the departure of Savage. What habits he contracted in the course of that acquaintance cannot now be known. The ambition of excelling in conversation, and that pride of victory, which, at times, disgraced a man of Johnson's genius, were, perhaps, native blemishes. A fierce spirit of independence, even in the midst of poverty, may be seen in Savage; and, if not thence transfused by Johnson into his own manners, it may, at least, be supposed to have gained strength from the example before him. During that connexion there was, if we believe Sir John Hawkins, a short separation between our author and his wife; but a reconciliation soon took place. Johnson loved her, and showed his affection in various modes of gallantry, which Garrick used to render ridiculous by his mimicry. The affectation of soft and fashionable airs did not become an unwieldy figure: his admiration was received by the wife with the flutter of an antiquated coquette; and both, it is well known, furnished matter for the lively genius of Garrick. The Polish poet was, probably, at that time in care that the whig dogs should not have the best of it." The sale of the Magazine was greatly increased by the Parliamentary Debates, which were continued by Johnson till the month of March 1742-3. From that time the Magazine was conducted by Dr. Hawkesworth. In 1743-4, Osborne, the bookseller, who kept a shop in Gray's-Inn, purchased the Earl of Oxford's library, at the price of thirteen thousand pounds. He projected a catalogue in five octavo volumes, at five shillings each. Johnson was employed in that painful drudgery. He was likewise to collect all such small tracts as were in any degrees worth preserving in order to reprint and publish the whole in a collection called "The Harleian Miscellany." The cata- | He was told that the Earl of Chesterfield was logue was completed: and the Miscellany, in a friend to his undertaking; and in consequence 1749, was published in eight quarto volumes. of that intelligence, he published, in 1747, The In this business Johnson was a day-labourer for Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language, immediate subsistence, not unlike Gustavus addressed to the Right Honourable Philip Dormer, Vasa working in the mines of Dalecarlia. What Earl of Chesterfield, one of his Majesty's princiWilcox, a bookseller of eminence in the Strand, pal Secretaries of State. Mr. Whitehead, aftersaid to Johnson, on his first arrival in town, was wards Poet Laureat, undertook to convey the now almost confirmed. He lent our author five manuscript to his Lordship: the consequence guineas, and then asked him, "How do you was an invitation from Lord Chesterfield to the mean to earn your livelihood in this town?" "By author. A stronger contrast of characters could my literary labours," was the answer. Wil-not be brought together; the Nobleman, celecox, staring at him, shook his head: "By your brated for his wit, and all the graces of polite literary labours!-You had better buy a porter's behaviour; the Author, conscious of his own knot." Johnson used to tell this anecdote to merit, towering in idea above all competition, Mr. Nichols; but he said, "Wilcox was one of versed in scholastic logic, but a stranger to the my best friends, and he meant well." In fact, arts of polite conversation, uncouth, vehement, Johnson, while employed in Gray's-Inn, may be and vociferous. The coalition was too unnatusaid to have carried a porter's knot. He paused ral. Johnson expected a Macenas, and was occasionally to peruse the book that came to his disappointed. No patronage, no assistance folhand. Osborne thought that such curiosity lowed. Visits were repeated; but the reception tended to nothing but delay, and objected to it was not cordial. Johnson one day was left a with all the pride and insolence of a man who full hour, waiting in an antichamber, till a genknew that he paid daily wages. In the dispute tleman should retire, and leave his lordship at that of course ensued, Osborne, with that rough-leisure. This was the famous Colley Cibber. ness which was natural to him, enforced his argument by giving the lie. Johnson seized a folio and knocked the bookseller down. This story has been related as an instance of Johnson's ferocity; but merit cannot always take the spurns of the unworthy with a patient spirit.* Johnson saw him go, and fired with indignation, rushed out of the house. What Lord Chesterfield thought of his visiter may be seen in a passage in one of that Nobleman's letters to his son. "There is a man, whose moral charac ter, deep learning, and superior parts, I acknowledge, admire, and respect; but whom it is so impossible for me to love, that I am almost in a fever whenever I am in his company. His figure (without being deformed) seems made to disgrace or ridicule the common structure of the human body. His legs and arms are never in the position which, according to the situation of his body, they ought to be in, but constantly That the history of an author must be found in his works, is, in general, a true observation; and was never more apparent than in the present narrative. Every era of Johnson's life is fixed by his writings. In 1744, he published the life of Savage; and then projected a new edition of Shakspeare. As a prelude to that design, he published, in 1745, "Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with Re-employed in committing acts of hostility upon marks on Sir Thomas Hanmer's Edition;" to the Graces. He throws any where, but down which were prefixed, "Proposals for a new Edi- his throat, whatever he means to drink: and tion of Shakspeare," with a specimen. Of this mangles what he means to carve. Inattentive pamphlet Warburton, in the Preface to Shaks to all the regards of social life, he mis-times and peare, has given his opinion: "As to all those mis-places every thing. He disputes with heat things, which have been published under the indiscriminately, mindless of the rank, charactitle of Essays, Remarks, Observations, &c. on ter, and situation of those with whom he disShakspeare, if you except some critical notes on putes. Absolutely ignorant of the several graMacbeth, given as a specimen of a projected edi-dations of familiarity and respect, he is exactly tion, and written, as appears, by a man of parts the same to his superiors, his equals, and his inand genius, the rest are absolutely below a se- feriors; and therefore by a necessary conserious notice." But the attention of the public quence, is absurd to two of the three. Is it poswas not excited; there was no friend to promote sible to love such a man? No. The utmost I a subscription; and the project died, to revive at can do for him is, to consider him a respectable a future day. A new undertaking, however, Hottentot." Such was the idea entertained by was soon after proposed; namely, an English lord Chesterfield. After the incident of Colley Dictionary upon an enlarged plan. Several of Cibber, Johnson never repeated his visits. In the most opulent booksellers had meditated a his high and decisive tone, he has been often work of this kind; and the agreement was soon heard to say, "Lord Chesterfield is a Wit adjusted between the parties. Emboldened by among Lords, and a Lord among Wits." this connexion, Johnson thought of a better ha- In the course of the year 1747, Garrick, in bitation than he had hitherto known. He had conjunction with Lacy, became patentee of lodged with his wife in courts and alleys about Drury-Lane playhouse. For the opening of the Strand; but now, for the purpose of carrying the theatre at the usual time, Johnson wrote on his arduous undertaking, and to be nearer for his friend the well-known prologue, which, his printer and friend, Mr. Strahan, he ventured to say no more of it, may at least be placed on to take a house in Gough-square, Fleet-street. a level with Pope's to the tragedy of Cato. The playhouse being now under Garrick's direction. *Mr. Boswell says, "The simple truth I had from JohnBon himself. Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat f Dr. Jolinson denies the whole of this story. him; but it was not in his shop, it was in my own cham-well's Life. vol. i. p. 128. Oct. edit. 1804. č. berm 1 Letter CCXII. (b) See Bos Johnson thought the opportunity fair to think of [blished a club, consisting of ten in number at his tragedy of Irene, which was his whole stock on his first arrival in town, in the year 1737. That play was accordingly put into rehearsal in January, 1749. As a precursor to prepare the way, and to awaken the public attention, The Vanity of Human Wishes, a poem in imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal, by the Author of London, was published in the same month. In the Gentleman's Magazine, for February, 1749, we find that the tragedy of Irene was acted at Drury-Lane, on Monday, February the 6th, and from that time, without interruption, to Monday, February, the 20th being in all thirteen nights. Since that time it has not been exhihited on any stage. Irene may be added to some other plays in our language, which have lost their place in the theatre, but continue to please in the closet. During the representation of this piece, Johnson attended every night behind the scenes. Conceiving that his character as an author required some ornament for his person, he chose upon that occasion to decorate himself with a handsome waistcoat, and a gold-laced hat. The late Mr. Topham Beauclerc, who had a great deal of that humour, which pleases the more for seeming undesigned, used to give a pleasant description of this green-room finery, as related by the author himself; "But," said Johnson, with great gravity, "I soon laid aside my gold-laced hat, lest it should make me proud." The amount of the three benefit nights for the tragedy of Irene, it is to be feared, was not very considerable, as the profit, that stimulating motive, never invited the author to another dramatic attempt. Some years afterwards, when the present writer was intimate with Garrick, and knew Johnson to be in distress, he asked the manager why he did not produce another tragedy for his Litchfield friend? Garrick's answer was remarkable: "When Johnson writes tragedy, declamation roars, and passion sleeps: when Shakspeare wrote, he dipped his pen in his own heart." Horseman's, in Ivy-Lane, on every Tuesday evening. This is the first scene of social life to which Johnson can be traced out of his own house. The members of this little society were, Samuel Johnson; Dr. Salter (father of the late Master of the Charter-House;) Dr. Hawkesworth; Mr. Ryland, a merchant; Mr. Payne, a bookseller, in Paternoster-row; Mr. Samuel Dyer, a learned young man; Dr. Wm. M'Ghie, a Scotch physician; Dr. Edmund Barker, a young physician; Dr. Bathurst, another young physician; and Sir John Hawkins. This list is given by Sir John, as it should seem, with no other view than to draw a spiteful and malevolent character of almost every one of them. Mr. Dyer, whom Sir John says he loved with the affection of a brother, meets with the harshest treatment, because it was his maxim, that to live in peace with mankind, and in a temper to do good offices, was the most essential part of our duty. That notion of moral goodness gave umbrage to Sir John Hawkins, and drew down upon the memory of his friend the bitterest imputations. Mr. Dyer, however, was admired and loved through life. He was a man of literature. Johnson loved to enter with him into a discussion of metaphysical, moral, and critical subjects; in those conflicts, exercising his talents, and, according to his custom, always contending for victory. Dr. Bathurst was the person on whom Johnson fixed his affection. He hardly ever spoke of him without tears in his eyes. It was from him, who was a native of Jamaica, that Johnson received into his service Frank,* the black servant, whom, on account of his master, he valued to the end of his life. At the time of instituting the club in Ivy-Lane, Johnson had projected the Rambler. The title was most probably suggested by the Wanderer; a poem which he mentions with the warmest praise, in the Life of Savage. With the same spirit of independence with which he wished to live, it was now his pride to write. There may, perhaps, be a degree of sameness He communicated his plan to none of his friends; in this regular way of tracing an author from he desired no assistance, relying entirely on his one work to another, and the reader may feel the own fund, and the protection of the Divine Be effect of a tedious monotony: but in the life of ing, which he implored in a solemn form of Johnson there are no other landmarks. He prayer, composed by himself for the occasion. was now forty years old, and had mixed but lit- Having formed a resolution to undertake a work tle with the world. He followed no profession, that might be of use and honour to his country, transacted no business, and was a stranger to he thought, with Milton, that this was not to be what is called a town life. We are now arrived obtained "but by devout prayer to that Eternal at the brightest period he had hitherto known. Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and His name broke out upon mankind with a de-knowledge, and send out his seraphim with the gree of lustre that promised a triumph over all his hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the difficulties. The Life of Savage was admired as lips of whom he pleases.” a beautiful and instructive piece of biography. The two imitations of Juvenal were thought to rival even the excellence of Pope; and the tragedy of Irene, though uninteresting on the stage, was universally admired in the closet, for the propriety of the sentiments, the richness of the language, and the general harmony of the whole composition. His fame was widely diffused; and he had made his agreement with the booksellers for his English Dictionary at the sum of fifteen hundred guineas; a part of which was to be, from time to time, advanced in proportion to the progress of the work. This was a certain fund for his support, without being obliged to write fugitive pieces for the petty supplies of the day. Accordingly we find that, in 1749, he esta Having invoked the special protection of Heaven, and by that act of piety fortified his mind, he began the great work of the Rambler. The first number was published on Tuesday, March the 20th, 1750; and from that time was continued regularly every Tuesday and Saturday, for the space of two years, when it finally closed, on Saturday, March 14, 1752. As it began with motives of piety, so it appears that the same religious spirit glowed with unabating ardour to the last. His conclusion is: "The Essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute my own intentions, will be found exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity, without any *See Gent. Mag. vol. Ixxi. p. 190. accommodation to the licentiousness and levity on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns, of the present age. I therefore look back on in his Paradise Lost; dedicated to the Universithis part of my work with pleasure, which no ties of Oxford and Cambridge." While the man shall diminish or augment. I shall never book was in the press, the proof-sheets were envy the honours which wit and learning obtain shown to Johnson at the Ivy-Lane club, by in any other cause, if I can be numbered among Payne, the bookseller, who was one of the memthe writers who have given ardour to virtue, and bers. No man in that Society was in possesconfidence to truth." The whole number of Es- sion of the authors from whom Lauder professed says amounted to two hundred and eight. Ad- to make his extracts. The charge was believed, dison's, in the Spectator, are more in number, and the contriver of it found his way to Johnson; but not half in point of quantity: Addison was who is represented by Sir John Hawkins, not not bound to publish on stated days; he could indeed as an accomplice in the fraud, but through watch the ebb and flow of his genius, and send motives of malignity to Milton, delighting in the his paper to the press when his own taste was detection, and exulting that the poet's reputation satisfied. Johnson's case was very different. would suffer by the discovery. More malice to He wrote singly and alone. In the whole pro- a deceased friend cannot well be imagined. gress of the work he did not receive more than Hawkins adds, "that he wished well to the arten essays. This was a scanty contribution. gument must be inferred from the preface, which For the rest, the author has described his situa-indubitably was written by him." The preface, tion. "He that condemns himself to compose it is well known, was written by Johnson, and on a stated day, will often bring to his task an for that reason is inserted in this edition. But attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an if Johnson approved of the argument, it was no imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted longer than while he believed it founded in truth. with anxieties, a body languishing with disease: Let us advert to his own words in that very prehe will labour on a barren topic, till it is too late face. "Among the inquiries to which the arto change it; or, in the ardour of invention, dif- dour of criticism has naturally given occasion, fuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which none is more obscure in itself, or more worthy of the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer rational curiosity, than a retrospection of the judgment to examine or reduce." Of this excel-progress of this mighty genius in the construclent production, the number sold on cach day did not amount to five hundred: of course the bookseller, who paid the author four guineas a week, did not carry on a successful trade. His generosity and perseverance deserve to be commended; and happily, when the collection appeared in volumes, were amply rewarded. Johnson lived to see his labours flourish in a tenth edition. His posterity, as an ingenious French writer has said on a similar occasion, began in his lifetime. the tion of his work; a view of the fabric gradually rising, perhaps from small beginnings, till its foundation rests in the centre, and its turrets a sparkle in the skies; to trace back the str through all its varieties, to the simplicity first plan; to find what was projected, whence the scheme was taken, how it was improved, by what assistance it was executed, and from what stores the materials were collected; whether its founder dug them from the quarries of nature, or demolished other buildings to embellish his In the beginning of 1750, soon after the Ram- own." These were the motives that induced bler was set on foot, Johnson was induced by the Johnson to assist Lauder with a preface: and arts of a vile impostor to lend his assistance, are not these the motives of a critic and a scho during a temporary delusion, to a fraud not to lar? What reader of taste, what man of real be paralleled in the annals of literature.* One knowledge, would not think his time well emLauder, a native of Scotland, who had been a ployed in an inquiry so curious, so interesting, teacher in the University of Edinburgh, had con- and instructive? If Lauder's facts were really ceived a mortal antipathy to the name and cha- true, who would not be glad, without the smallracter of Milton. His reason was, because the est tincture of malevolence, to receive real inprayer of Pamela, in Sir Philip Sidney's Arca- formation? It is painful to be thus obliged to dia, was, as he supposed, maliciously inserted vindicate a man who, in his heart, towered above by the great poet in an edition of the Eikon the petty arts of fraud and imposition, against an Basilike, in order to fix an imputation of impiety injudicious biographer, who undertook to be his on the memory of the murdered king. Fired editor, and the protector of his memory. Anowith resentment, and willing to reap the profits ther writer, Dr. Towers, in an Essay on the Life of a gross imposition, this man collected from and Character of Dr. Johnson, seems to counteseveral Latin poets, such as Masenius the Je-nance this calumny. He says, "It can hardly suit, Staphorstius a Dutch divine, Beza, and others, all such passages as bore any kind of resemblance to different places in the Paradise Lost; and these he published from time to time, in the Gentleman's Magazine, with occasional interpolations of lines, which he himself translated from Milton. The public credulity swallowed all with eagerness; and Milton was supposed to be guilty of plagiarism from inferior modern writers. The fraud succeeded so well, that Lauder collected the whole into a volume, and advertised it under the title of "An Essay *It has since been paralleled, in the case of the Shakspeare MSS. by a yet more vile impostor. be doubted, but that Johnson's aversion to Milton's politics was the cause of that alacrity with which he joined with Lauder in his infamous attack on our great epic poet, and which induced him to assist in that transaction." These words would seem to describe an accomplice, were they not immediately followed by an express declaration, that Johnson was unacquainted with the imposture. Dr. Towers adds, "It seems to have been by way of making some compensation to the memory of Milton, for the share he had in the attack of Lauder, that Johnson wrote the Prologue, spoken by Garrick, at Drury-Lane Theatre, 1750, on the performance of the Masque of Comus, for the benefit of Milton's grand daughter." Dr. Towers is not free from prejudice; but, as Shakspeare has it, "he begets a temperance, to give it smoothness." He is, therefore, entitled to a dispassionate answer. When Johnson wrote the prologue, it does not appear that he was aware of the malignant artifices practised by Lauder. In the postscript to Johnson's preface, a subscription is proposed, for relieving the grand-daughter of the author of Paradise Lost. Dr. Towers will agree that this shows Johnson's alacrity in doing good. That alacrity showed itself again in the letter printed in the European Magazine, January, 1785, and there said to have appeared originally in the General Advertiser, 4th April, 1750, by which the public were invited to embrace the opportunity of paying à just regard to the illustrious dead, united with the pleasure of doing good to the living. The letter adds, "to assist industrious indigence, struggling with distress, and debilitated by age, is a display of virtue, and an acquisition of happiness and honour. Whoever, therefore, would be thought capable of pleasure in reading the works of our incomparable Milton, and not so destitute of gratitude as to refuse to lay out a trifie, in a rational and elegant entertainment, for the benefit of his living remains, for the exercise of their own virtue, the increase of their reputation, and the consciousness of doing good, should appear at DruryLane Theatre, to-morrow, April 5, when CoмUS will be performed for the benefit of Mrs. Elizabeth oster, grand-daughter to the author, and the only surviving branch of his family. Nota bene, there will be a new prologue on the occasion, written by the author of Irene, and spoken by Mr. Garrick." The man who had thus exerted himself to serve the grand-daughter, cannot be supposed to have entertained personal malice to the grand-father. It is true, that the malevolence of Lauder, as well as the impostures of Archibald Bower, were fully detected by the labours, in the cause of truth, of the Rev. Dr. Douglas, the late Lord Bishop of Salisbury. -"Diram qui contudit Hydram, Notaque fatali portenta labore subegit." But the pamphlet, entitled, "Milton vindicated from the charge of Plagiarism brought against him by Mr. Lauder, and Lauder himself convicted of several Forgeries and gross Impositions on the Public, by John Douglas, M. A. Rector of Eaton Constantine, Salop," was not published till the year 1751. In that work, p. 77, Dr. Douglas says, "It is to be hoped, nay, it is expected, that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious sentiments and inimitable style point out the author of Lauder's preface and postscript, will no longer allow A MAN to plume himself with his feathers, who appears so little to have deserved his assistance, an assistance which I am persuaded would never have been communicated, had there been the least suspicion of those facts, which I have been the instrument of conveying to the world." We have here a contemporary testimony to the integrity of Dr. Johnson throughout the whole of that vile transaction. What was the consequence of the requisition made by Dr. Douglas? Johnson, whose ruling passion may be said to be the love of truth, convinced Lauder, that it would be more for his interest to make a full confession | of his guilt, than to stand forth the convicted champion of a lie; and for this purpose he drew up, in the strongest terms, a recantation, in a Letter to the Rev. Mr. Douglass, which Lauder signed, and published in the year 1751. That piece will remain a lasting memorial of the abhorrence with which Johnson beheld a violation of truth. Mr. Nichols, whose attachment to his illustrious friend was unwearied, showed him, in 1780, a book called "Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton," in which the affair of Lauder was renewed with virulence, and a poetical scale in the Literary Magazine, 1758, (when Johnson had ceased to write in that collection) was urged as an additional proof of deliberate malice. He read the libellous passage with attention, and instantly wrote on the margin: "In the business of Lauder I was deceived, partly by thinking the man too frantic to be fraudulent. Of the poetical scale quoted from the Magazine I am not the author. I fancy it was put in after I had quitted that work; for I not only did not write it, but I do not remember it." As a critic and a scholar, Johnson was willing to receive what numbers, at the time, believed to be true information: when he found that the whole was a forgery, he renounced all connexion with the author. In March 1752, he felt a severe stroke of affliction in the death of his wife. The last number of the Rambler, as already mentioned, was on the 14th of that month. The loss of Mrs. Johnson was then approaching, and probably was the cause that put an end to those admirable periodical essays. It appears that she died on the 28th of March: in a memorandum, at the foot of the Prayers and Meditations, that is called her Dying Day. She was buried at Bromley, under the care of Dr. Hawkesworth. Johnson placed a Latin inscription on her tomb, in which he celebrated her beauty. With the singularity of his prayers for his deceased wife, from that time to the end of his days, the world is sufficiently acquainted. On Easter-day, 22d April, 1764, his memorandum says: "Thought on Tetty, poor dear Tetty; with my eyes full. Went to church. After sermon I recommended Tetty in a prayer by herself; and my father, mother, brother, and Bathurst, in another. I did it only once, so far as it might be lawful for me." In a prayer, January 23, 1759, the day on which his mother was buried, he commends, as far as may be lawful, her soul to God, imploring for her whatever is most beneficial to her in her present state. In this habit he persevered to the end of his days. The Rev. Mr. Strahan, the editor of the Prayers and Meditations, observes, "That Johnson, on some occasions, prays that the Almighty may have had mercy on his wife and Mr. Thrale; evidently supposing their sentence to have been already passed in the Divine Mind; and by consequence, proving, that he had no belief in a state of purgatory, and no reason for praying for the dead that could impeach the sincerity of his profession as a Protestant." Mr. Strahan adds, "That, in praying for the regretted tenants of the grave, Johnson conformed to a practice which has been retained by many learned members of the Established Church, though the Liturgy no longer admits it. If where the tree falleth, there it shall be; if our state, at the close of life, is to be the measure of |