continued during thirty years. His first literary undertaking was a translation of Father Lobo's Travels in Abyssinia, but his hopes of success meeting with little but disappointment, he determined to launch upon the great ocean of London literary life. In 1736 he had married Mrs. Porter, a widow old enough to be his mother, but whom, notwithstanding her defects of person and cultivation, he always loved with the energy of his masculine and affectionate character. In 1737 he travelled to London in company with David Garrick, one of the few pupils he had had under his charge at Edial, who was destined, in another path, to follow a brilliant career. Garrick's ambition was to appear on the stage, where he speedily took the first place, and Johnson carried with him the unfinished MS. of his tragedy Irene. Without fortune, without friends, of singularly uncouth and forbidding exterior, Johnson entered upon the career-then perhaps at its lowest ebb of profit and respectability-of a bookseller's hack, or literary drudge. He became a contributor to divers journals, and particularly to the Gentleman's Magazine, then carried on by its founder, Cave; and as an obscure laborer for the press he furnished criticisms, prefaces, translations, in short all kinds of humble literary work, and ultimately supplied reports of the proceedings in Parliament, though the names of the speakers, in obedience to the law which then rendered it penal to reproduce the debates, were disguised under imaginary titles. He first emerged into popularity in 1738, by the publication of his satire entitled London, an admirable paraphrase or reproduction of the thirteenth satire of Juvenal, in which he adapts the sentiments and topics of the great Roman poet to the neglect of letters in London, and the humiliations which an honest man must encounter in a society where foreign quacks and native scoundrels could alone hope for success. During this miserable and obscure portion of his career, when he dined in a cellar upon sixpennyworth of meat and a pennyworth of bread, when he signed himself, in a note to his employer, "yours, impransus, S. Johnson," when his ragged coat and torn shoes made him ashamed to appear at the table of his publisher, and caused him to devour his dinner behind a screen, he retained all his native dignity of mind and severe honesty of principle. There is something affecting in the picture of this great and noble mind laboring on through toil and distress which would have crushed most men, and which, though it roughened his manners, only intensified his humanity, and augmented his self-respect. In 1744 he published the Life of Savage, that unhappy poet whose career was so extraordinary, and whose vices were not less striking than his talents. Johnson had known him well, and they had often wandered supperless and homeless about the streets at midnight. The vigorous and manly thought expressed in Johnson's sonorous language rendered this biography popular; but the improvement in the author's circumstances was very tardy in making its appearance: no literary life was ever a more correct exemplification than that of Johnson, of the truth of his own majestic line: "Slow rises worth by poverty depressed."

§ 6. During the eight years extending from 1747 to 1755 Johnson was

engaged in the execution of his laborious undertaking, the compilation of his great Dictionary of the English Language, which long occupied the place among us of the Dictionary of the Academy in France and Spain. The etymological part of this great work, in consequence of Johnson sharing the then almost universal ignorance of the Teutonic languages, is totally without value; but the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the definitions, and above all the interesting quotations adduced to exemplify the different senses of the words, render it a book that may always be read with pleasure. The compilers of the French and Spanish Dictionaries do, indeed, quote passages, in support of the meanings they assign to words, from the great classical writers of their respective literature; but these quotations have no further interest, or even sense, than is necessary to exhibit the particular meaning of the word illustrated, while Johnson's are either some striking passage of poetry and eloquence, or some historical fact or scientific axiom or definition. Thus a page of Johnson's Dictionary always gratifies a curiosity quite independent of mere philological research. When we think of this solitary scholar with painful industry compiling a great national work, at least not inferior to productions which in other countries have occupied the attention of learned and richly endowed societies during a great number of years, we cannot but feel deep admiration for our countryman. While engaged in this laborious task he diverted his mind by the publication of the Vanity of Human Wishes, a companion to his London, being a similar imitation of the tenth satire of his Roman prototype. This is written in a loftier, more solemn and declamatory style than the preceding poem, and is a fine specimen of Johnson's dignified but somewhat gloomy rhetoric. The illustrations, drawn from history, of the futility of those objects which men sigh for, literary, military, or political renown, beauty, wealth, long life, or splendid alliances, Johnson has reproduced with kindred vigor; but he has added several of his own, where he shows a power and grandeur in no sense inferior to that of Juvenal. Thus to the striking picture of the fall of Sejanus, related with such grim humor by the Roman satirist, Johnson has added the not less impressive picture of the disgrace of Wolsey, and his episode of Charles XII. is no unworthy counterpart to the portrait of Hannibal. At about the same time Johnson brought out upon the stage, principally through the friendly interest of Garrick, who was now the principal theatrical manager, the tragedy of Irene, which had long been in vain awaiting the opportunity of representation. Its success was insignificant, and indeed could not have been otherwise, for the plot of the piece is totally devoid of interest and probability; there is no discrimination of character, no painting of passion, and the work consists of a series of lofty moral declamations in Johnson's labored and rhetorical style.

§ 7. Johnson founded, and carried on alone, two periodical papers in the style that Addison and Steele had rendered so popular. These were the Idler, which lasted but a short time, and the Rambler, appearing twice a week and sold at a low price. The ease, grace, pleasantry,

and variety which gave such charm to the Tatler and Spectator are totally incompatible with the heavy, antithetical, ponderous manner of Johnson; and his good sense, piety, and sombre tone of morality are but a poor substitute for the mite ingenium and knowledge of the world displayed in his models. Yet though bearing every mark of labor, Johnson's essays were written with great rapidity, and often despatched to the press without revisal. This species of periodical essay-writing, which exerted so powerful an influence on taste and manners in the eighteenth century, may be said to terminate with the Rambler, though continued with gradually increasing want of originality by other writers, till it finally died out with Hawkesworth, Moore, and Bonnell Thornton,* the former of whom was but a feeble mimic of the Johnsonian manner. Johnson's mother died in 1759, and he wrote with extraordinary rapidity, and for the purpose of raising funds for her funeral, his once-celebrated moral tale, Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. The manners and scenery of this story are neither those of Oriental nor of any other known country, and the book is little else but a series of dialogues and reflections, embodying the author's ideas on an immense variety of subjects connected with art, literature, society, and philosophy, and his lofty, but gloomy and discouraging principles of ethics and religion. It has sometimes been fancifully contrasted with the Candide of Voltaire, and indeed it would be difficult to find two nearly contemporary works presenting a more complete antagonism in tendency and manner.

At various periods of his career Johnson had given to the world several political pamphlets, generally distinguished for the violence with which arbitrary doctrines are maintained, and for a strange mixture of sense and vigor and narrow prejudice. Thus he was an ardent opponent of the rights of the American colonies to revolt against oppression, and through his whole life exhibited an ardent advocacy of extreme Tory doctrines, singularly at variance with his liberality in other respects. It was not till 1762, when the philosopher had reached the age of fifty-three, that he emerged from the constant poverty which had hitherto almost overwhelmed him, and against which he had so valiantly struggled. At the accession of George III. the government hoped to gain popularity by showing some favor to art and letters; and Johnson, who now occupied an honorable and leading position as a

* JOHN HAWKESWORTH (1715–1773) edited The Adventurer, which appeared twice a week from 1752 to 1754. Hawkesworth also translated Telemachus, and wrote an account of Captain Cook's voyages.

EDWARD MOORE (1712-1757) edited The World, which appeard weekly from 1753 to 1756, and in which he was assisted by Lord Lyttelton, the Earl of Chesterfield, Horace Walpole, and other distinguished literary men. Moore likewise wrote a tragedy called The Gamester.

BONNELL THORNTON (1724-1768) wrote, in conjunction with his friend George Colman the elder, The Connoisseur, which appeared from 1754 to 1756. Thornton was the author of several other works; but he is best known by his translation of Plautus, which he made in conjunction with Warner and Colman.

moralist and poet, was gratified by Lord Bute with a pension of 300l. a year. Johnson now found himself, for the first time in his life, placed above want, and was able to indulge not only his constitutional indolence, but that noble charity and benevolence which transformed his dwelling into a sort of asylum for helpless indigence. In spite of his own poverty he had maintained under his roof a strange assembly of pensioners on his bounty, whose only claims upon him were their infirmities and their distress. There was Anna Williams, a blind poetess, Mrs. Desmoulins, and Levett, a sort of humble practitioner of medicine among the most miserable classes of London; and a thousand anecdotes are related of the generosity of Johnson to these inmates, with whose quarrels and repinings he bore, and over whom he watched with unrelaxing kindness.

§ 8. At this period of his life Johnson became acquainted with JAMES BOSWELL (1740-1795), whose biography of the old sage is perhaps the most perfect and interesting account of a literary life and a literary epoch which the world has yet seen. Boswell was a young Scottish advocate of good family and fortune; he belonged to a nation which Johnson regarded with unreasonable and almost ludicrous aversion; he was vain, tattling, frivolous, and contemptible in the highest degree, totally deficient both in self-respect, tact, and solidity of principle; yet his sincere admiration for Johnson established a lasting friendship between these incompatible characters, and Boswell has produced not only the most lively and vivid portrait of the person, manners, and conversation of Johnson, but the most admirable picture of the society amid which he played so brilliant a part. Among the most celebrated social meetings of that age of clubs was the society founded by Johnson, and in which his friends Reynolds, Burke, Garrick, Bishop Percy, Goldsmith, Bennet Langton, Beauclerc, and others, were prominent figures. Indeed from its very foundation the most distinguished artists, conversers, and men of letters have been members of this club; and Boswell's delight was to record the "wit combats" which were incessantly taking place among them, as well as to preserve every fragment that he could collect by hearsay and observation, of the manners and converse of his idol. Thus he has given us, with a consummate skill only the more astonishing from what we know of his character, the most accurate yet lively transcript of the intellectual society of Johnson's day. Johnson's powers of conversation were extraordinary: he delighted in discussion, and had acquired by constant practice the art of expressing himself with pointed force and elegance, while the ponderous antitheses and sesquipedalian diction of his written style were replaced by a muscular and idiomatic expression which formed an appropriate vehicle for his weighty thoughts, his apt illustrations, and his immense stores of reading and observation. He often argued for victory; and the ingenious paradox and sledge-hammer repartees with which he sometimes overwhelmed opposition, are by no means the least interesting traits of his wonderful skill in social contest. Hardly any subject was broached on which Johnson had not something

ingenious, if not admirable, to say. This was perhaps the most brilliant and the happiest portion of his life. He made the acquaintance of the family of Thrale, a rich brewer and member of the House of Commons, who, like most of his contemporaries, was filled with admiration by the varied and imposing talents of the great wit and writer, and whose wife was equally famous for her own talents and for the bright intellectual society she loved to assemble round her. At Thrale's house in London, as well as at his luxurious villa at Streatham, Johnson was for many years a frequent and an honored guest. His comfort was studied, his sickness was nursed, his coarseness of manner forgiven, and down to the time of Thrale's death Johnson enjoyed under his roof all that friendship and respect, aided by boundless wealth, could give. This connection, which lasted about fourteen years, gave Johnson the opportunity of frequenting refined society; and in the company of the Thrales he made several excursions to different parts of England, and once indeed as far as Paris. He undertook, unfortunately for his fame, the task of preparing a new edition of Shakspeare, an enterprise for which he was unfitted not only by his little sympathy with that romantic class of poetry of which Shakspeare is the chief representative, but by an almost total want of acquaintance with the writings of Shakspeare's age, an accurate knowledge of which is of course a primary requisite for any one who wishes to explain the obscurities of the poet. The edition, with the exception of an occasional happy remark, and a sensible selection from the commentaries of preceding annotators, is quite unworthy of Johnson's reputation. In 1773 Johnson undertook, in company with his friend Boswell, an expedition to the Hebrides, a journey which would in those days have appeared almost as enterprising as would now an exploration of the interior of Africa; and this voyage not only enabled him to make acquaintance with Scotland and the Scots, and thus to dissipate many of his old prejudices against the country and the people, but gave him the opportunity of exercising his observation and curiosity on a region entirely new to him and rarely visited by travellers. The volume in which he gives an account of his impressions contains many interesting and characteristic passages. His last work of any consequence, and which is also unquestionably his best, was the Lives of the Poets, originating in the proposal made to him by several publishers that he should write a few lines of biographical and critical preface to the collected works of the English poets, of which they were preparing an edition. Johnson accepted the task, but the work far outgrew the limits originally proposed, and he furnished an invaluable series of literary portraits. Unfortunately the plan altogether excluded the greatest poets that our literature has produced, and admitted no names, excepting those of Milton, Butler, Dryden, and Pope, which can be ranked in the first, or even very high in the second class. It seemed as if the plan had been purposely designed to embrace what was undoubtedly the least poetical epoch of our literature. But Johnson performed his task with such skill, and poured forth so abundantly the stores of his sound sense and acute reflection, that these lives