torian figuring always in the group with his more stern idol, affording relief, by contrast, to the picture of the sage, and amusing with his own harmless foibles, which he takes a pleasure in revealing, as if he shared the gratification he was preparing for his unknown reader. His cleverness, his tact, his skill in drawing forth those he was studying, his admirable good humour, his strict love of truth, his high and generous principle, his kindness towards his friends, his unvarying but generally rational piety, have scarcely been sufficiently praised by those who nevertheless have been always ready, as needs they must be, to acknowledge the debt of gratitude due for perhaps the book of all that were ever written, the most difficult to lay down once it has been taken up. To the great work of Mr. Boswell, may be added some portions of Sir John Hawkins's far inferior, and much less accurate biography; the amusing but also somewhat careless anecdotes of Mrs. Piozzi, formerly Mrs. Thrale, and above all, the two interesting works of Madame D'Arblay, the celebrated Miss Burney, her own autobiography, and the life of her father. These works, but the two last especially, abound in important additions to that of Mr. Boswell; and what relates to Dr. Johnson certainly forms the principal value of them both*.

*We must, however, not pass over the light, somewhat lurid it must be owned, which the autobiography sheds on the habits and effects of a court life; the dreadful prostration of the understanding which may be seen to arise among at least the subordinate figures of the courtly group. I own that I cannot conceive this to be the universally resembling picture. My own experience and observation of many years, some of them passed in near connexion with our court, leads me to this conclusion. It must be added in extenuation of the absurdities so often laughed at in Boswell, that this amiable

In estimating the merits of Johnson, prejudices of a very powerful nature have too generally operated unfavourably to the cause of truth. The strongly marked features of his mind were discernible in the vehemence of his opinions both on political and religious subjects; he was a high tory, and a high churchman in all controversies respecting the state; he was under the habitual influence of his religious impressions, and leant decidedly in favour of the system established and protected by law. He treated those whose opinions had an opposite inclination, with little tolerance and no courtesy; and hence while these undervalued his talents and his acquirements, those with whom he so cordially agreed, were apt to overrate both. To this must be added, two accidental circumstances, from which were derived exaggerated opinions, both of his merits and his defects; the extravagant admiration of the little circle in which he lived producing a reaction among all beyond it; and the vehement national prejudices under which he laboured, if indeed he did not cherish and indulge them, prejudices that made his own countrymen prone to exalt, and strangers as prone to decry both his understanding and his knowledge. On one point, however, there is never likely to be any difference of opinion. While the exercise of his judgment will by all be allowed to have been disturbed by his prejudices, the strength of his faculties will be admitted by

author furnishes quite her fair proportion of the matter of ridicule. Such weakness as marks many of her sentiments, such deeply seated vanity as pervades the whole, not only of her own, but of her father's memoirs, which are in truth an autobiography as much as a life of him, cannot certainly be surpassed, if they can be matched, in the less deliberate effusions of Mr. Boswell's avowed self-esteem.

all; and no one is likely to deny that he may justly be ranked among the most remarkable men of his age, even if we regard the works which he has left, but much more if we consider the resources of his conversation. This must be the result of a calm and candid review of his history, after all due allowance shall be made for the undoubted effects of manner and singularity in exalting the impression of both his writings and his talk.

Samuel Johnson was born 18th of September, 1709, at Lichfield, where his father, originally from Derbyshire, was a bookseller and stationer in a small way of business. His mother was of a yeoman's family named Ford, for many generations settled in Warwickshire. He inherited from his father a large and robust bodily frame, with a disposition towards melancholy and hypochondriacism, which proved the source of wretchedness to him through life. From his nurse he is supposed (though probably it was hereditary too,) to have caught a scrofulous disorder, of whose ravages he always bore the scars, which deprived him of the sight of one eye, and which, under the influence of the vulgar supposition so long prevalent, made his parents bring him to London that he might be touched by Queen Anne. His father was a man of respectable character and good abilities; and while he devoted himself to his trade, frequenting various parts of the country to sell his books, he seems to have had much pleasure in the diffusion of knowledge, and to have been himself knowing in several branches of ordinary learning. His mother was uneducated, but had a strong natural understanding, and a deep sense of religion, which she early instilled into her son. There was only one other child, a younger brother, who followed