The spirit

amount to more than twenty pounds. and independence of Johnson, however, were not to be shaken by the pressure of adversity; and the following note, which is copied from his diary, exhibits, on this occasion, a high tone of fortitude and virtue. "1732, Junii 15. Undecim aureos deposui, quodie, quidquid ante matris ponus (quod serum sit precor) de paternis bonis sperare licet, viginti scilicet libras, accepi. Usque adeo mihi mea fortuna pingenda est interea, et ne paupertate vires animi languescant, ne in flagitia egestas adigat, cavendum."

Thus situated, it became necessary to adopt some plan for immediate subsistence; and he, therefore, readily embraced the offer of officiating as under-master of the grammar-school at Market-Bosworth, in Leicestershire. To this

place he went on foot, on the sixteenth of July, 1732; but, owing to the pride and insolence of Sir Wolstan Dixie, the patron of the seminary, and in whose house he resided as a kind of domestic chaplain, he speedily relinquished the engagement, nor could he ever reflect on the few months that were spent in this situation, without the most marked abhorrence.

At this juncture, he received and accepted an invitation from a Mr. Hector, who had formerly been his school-fellow, and who was now practising

as a Surgeon at Birmingham, to spend a few months with him as his guest. This gentleman then lodged with Mr. Warren, a bookseller of eminence in that eity, and who finding Johnson a man of literature, obtained from him some periodical essays for insertion in a newspaper, of. which he was proprietor; these are, it is said, no longer in existence.

After a residence of six months with Mr. Hector, and wishing still to enjoy the solace of his. society and advice, he took lodgings of a Mr. Jarvis in another part of the town; and here, at the solicitation of his friend, and Mr. Warren, he translated and abridged Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia from the French of the Abbé Le Grand For this work, a considerable portion of which was dictated to Mr. Hector as Johnson lay in bed, he received from Mr. Warren but five guineas; a sum, that with all allowances for the value of money at the period in question, must be considered as miserably inadequate to the time and labour which were bestowed. The book was printed in octavo at Birmingham, but published anonymously in London in 1735 by Bettesworth and Hitch, of Pater-noster Row,

To the narrative of Lobo, which details the fruitless efforts of a company of Portuguese missionaries to convert the natives of Abyssinia te

the church of Rome, Le Grand has added an account of the final expulsion of the Jesuits from that country, and fifteen dissertations on the history, religion, manners, &c. of Abyssinia. To the whole Johnson has prefixed a preface, and a dedication in the name of his bookseller to John Warren, Esq. of Pembrokeshire. The produc tion is remarkable on two accounts; as the first prose composition of Johnson, and as containing a relation of the discovery of the head of the Nile.

In the version itself, there are no traces of the style which Johnson subsequently assumed; all is unaffected and plain, and in correspondence with the tone of the original; but the preface and dedication display, in several instances, the rudiments of that structure of sentence, and mode of expression, for which the author was afterwards so, celebrated. The Voyage to Abyssinia is very interesting, nor can there be any doubt, that, with regard to the discovery of the fountains of the Nile, Mr. Bruce has been anticipated completely; but, according to Mr. Murray, the very accurate and learned editor of Bruce's Travels, not by Lobo, but by Pedro Paez, a Portuguese missionary, whose description of the sources was published by Kercher, and by Isaac Vossius, and copied. by Lobo, and who better than a century

and a half ago described accurately what our modern adventurer, under the stimulating idea of a first explorer, endured so many dangers and fatigues to witness.* It is likewise probable, as Mr. Boswell has suggested, that Johnson's atten tion to the version of Le Grand might have induced him, many years afterwards, to place the chief scene of his Rasselas in Abyssinia.

Shortly after the completion of his translation, and in the commencement of the year 1734, he returned to Lichfield; but seeing the necessity of recurring to his pen for subsistence, he issued proposals, in the August following, for an edition of the Latin Poems of Politian, to be published by subscription, and intituled Angeli Politiani Poemata Latina, quibus notas, cum historia Latina poeseos, a Petrarchæ ævo ad Politiani temporà deducta et vita Politiani fusius quam antehac

The question whether Mr. Bruce ever actually visited the sources in Geesh, is finally settled by the industry of Mr. Murray, who has discovered the journal of Mr. Bruce's sole companion to the fountains, Balugnani the Italian. “This manuscript is in Italian, in Balugnani's hand-writing, on the smooth cream-coloured cotton paper of the east. It contains a complete detail of the hours and days in which they travelled; of the villages, rivers, moun tains, and, in short, of every remarkable object they met with, from their leaving Gondar on Sunday 28th of October, 1770, at half after nine A. M. till their return, Sunday 18th of November, one o'clock P. M. in the same year."

Though the

enarrata addidit SAM, JOHNSON. volume was to contain thirty sheets in octavo, and was offered at the very moderate price of five shillings, so few were the subscribers, that the editor, apprehensive of an insufficient sale, thought it prudent to relinquish the design.

The failure of this scheme, the lovers of learning have reason to lament; a history of Latin poetry from the age of Petrarch to the time of Politian, would, from the pen of Johnson, have been a most valuable accession to our stock of literary information; nor would the life of Politian, written, as the editor intended, at large, have been less fertile in interest, as few of those. who flourished during the revival of literature possess equal claims to our notice and applause, Of the poems of Politian, the Nutricia is the most elegant and pleasing; for, as the author asserts in one of his epistles, historiam continet omnium feré vatum; it was his intention, had not death at the age of forty prematurely closed all his views, to have accompanied it with an extensive commentary; and an edition, thus illustrated, would, if conducted by a man of taste and various reading, be still a most acceptable labour. The Miscellanea and Epistolæ of Politian highly merit likewise, a republication.*

* In an elegant preface by Bishop Atterbury to a little