to its magistracy. He was born 18th September, 1709. His school days were spent in his native city, and his education completed at Pembroke College, Oxford. Of gigantic strength of body, and mighty powers of mind, he was afflicted with that nameless disease on the spirits, which often rendered the latter useless; and externally deformed by a scrofulous complaint, the scars of which disfigured his otherwise strong and sensible countenance. The indigence of his parents compelled him to leave college upon his father's death in 1731, when he gathered in a succession of eleven pounds sterling. In poverty, however, his learning and his probity secured him respect. He was received in the best society of his native place. His first literary attempt, the translation of Father Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia, appeared during this period, and probably led him, at a later period, to lay in that remote kingdom the scene of his philosophical tale, which follows this essay. About the same time, he married a wife considerably older than himself, and attempted to set up a school in the neighbourhood of Litchfield. The project proved unsuccessful; and in 1737, he set out to try to mend his fortunes in London, attended by David Garrick. Johnson had with him in manuscript his tragedy of Irene, and meant to commence dramatic author; Garrick was to be bred to the law-Fate had different designs for both.

There is little doubt, that upon his outset in London, Johnson felt in full force the ills which assail the unprotected scholar, whose parts are yet unknown to the public, and who must write at once for bread and for distinction. His splendid imitation of Juvenal, London, a satire, was the first of his works which drew the attention of the public; yet, neither its celebrity, nor that of its more brilliant successor, the Vanity of Human Wishes, the deep and pathetic morality of which has often extracted tears from those whose eyes wander dry over pages professedly sentimental, could save the poet from the irksome drudgery of a writer of all-work. His Irene, also, was unfortunate on the stage, and his valuable hours were consumed in obscure labour. He was fortunate, however, in a strong and virtuous power of thinking, which prevented his plunging into those excesses, in which neglected genius, in catching at momentary gratification, is so apt to lose character and respectability. While his friend, Savage, was wasting considerable powers in temporary gratification, Johnson was advancing slowly but surely into a higher class of society. The powers of his pen were supported by those of his conversation; he lost no friend by misconduct, and each new friend whom he made became his admirer.

The booksellers, also, were sensible of his value as a literary labourer, and employed him in that laborious and gigantic task, a Dictionary of the language. How it is executed, is well-known, and sufficiently surprising, considering that the learned author was a stranger to the Northern languages, on which English is radically grounded, and that the discoveries in grammar, since made by

Horne Tooke, were then unknown. In the mean time, the publication of the Rambler, though not very successful during its progress, stamped the character of the author as one of the first moral writers of the age, and as eminently qualified to write, and even to improve, the English language.

In 1752, Johnson was deprived of his wife, a loss which he appears to have felt most deeply. After her death, society, the best of which was now open to a man who brought such stores to increase its pleasures, seems to have been his principal enjoyment, and his great resource when assailed by that malady of mind which embittered his solitary moments.

The Idler, scarce so popular as the Rambler, followed in 1758. In 1759, Rasselas was hastily composed, in order to pay the expenses of his mother's funeral, and some small debts which she had contracted. This beautiful tale was composed in one week, and sent in portions to the printer. Johnson told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he never afterwards read it over. The publishers paid the author an hundred pounds, with twenty-four more, when the work came to a second edition.

The mode in which Rasselas was composed, and the purposes for which it was written, show that the author's situation was still embarrassed. But his circumstances became more easy in 1762, when a pension of £300 placed him beyond the drudgery of labouring for mere subsistence. It was distinctly explained, that this grant was made on public grounds alone, and intended as homage to Johnson's services for literature. But two political pamphlets, The False Alarm, and that upon the Falkland Islands, afterwards showed that the author was grateful.

In 1765, pushed forward by the satire of Churchill, Johnson published his subscription Shakspeare, for which proposals had been long in circulation.

The author's celebrated Journey to the Hebrides was published in 1775. Whatever might be his prejudices against Scotland, its natives must concede, that many of his remarks concerning the poverty and barrenness of the country, tended to produce those subsequent exertions, which have done much to remedy the causes of reproach. The Scots were angry because Johnson was not enraptured with their scenery, which, from a defect of bodily organs, he could neither see nor appreciate; and they seem to have set rather too high a rate on the hospitality paid to a stranger, when they contended it should shut the mouth of a literary traveller upon all subjects but those of panegyric. Dr. Johnson took a better way of repaying the civilities he received, by exercising kindness and hospitality in London to all such friends as he had received attention from in Scotland.

His pamphlet, entitled Taxation no Tyranny, which drew upon him much wrath from those who supported the American cause, is written in a strain of high toryism, and tended to pro

mote an event, pregnant with much good and evil, the separation of the mother country from the American colonies.

In 1777, he was engaged in one of his most pleasing, as well as most popular works, The Lives of the British Poets, which he executed with a degree of critical force and talent which has seldom been concentrated.

Johnson's laborious and distinguished career terminated in 1783, when virtue was deprived of a steady supporter, society of a brilliant ornament, and literature of a successful cultivator. The latter part of his life was honoured with general applause, for none was more fortunate in obtaining and preserving the friendship of the wise and the worthy. Thus loved and venerated, Johnson might have been pronounced happy. But Heaven, in whose eyes strength is weakness, permitted his faculties to be clouded occasionally with that morbid affection of the spirits, which disgraced his talents by prejudices, and his manners by rudeness.

When we consider the rank which Dr. Johnson held, not only in literature, but in society, we cannot help figuring him to ourselves as the benevolent giant of some fairy tale, whose kindnesses and courtesies are still mingled with a part of the rugged ferocity imputed to the fabulous sons of Anak; or rather, perhaps, like a Roman Dictator, fetched from his farm, whose wisdom and heroism still relished of his rustic occupation. And there were times when, with all his wisdom, and all his wit, this rudeness of disposition, and the sacrifices and submissions which he unsparingly exacted, were so great, that even Mrs. Thrale seems at length to have thought that the honour of being Johnson's hostess was almost counterbalanced by the tax which he exacted on her time and patience.

The cause of those deficiencies in temper and manners, was no ignorance of what was fit to be done in society, or how far each individual ought to suppress his own wishes in favour of those with whom he associates; for, theoretically, no man understood the rules of good breeding better than Dr. Johnson, or could act more exactly in conformity with them, when the high rank of those with whom he was in company for the time required that he should do so. But during the greater part of his life, he had been in a great measure a stranger to the higher society, in which such restraint became necessary; and it may be fairly presumed, that the indulgence of a variety of little selfish peculiarities, which it is the object of good breeding to suppress, became thus familiar to him. The consciousness of his own mental superiority in most companies which he frequented, contributed to his dogmatism; and when he had attained his eminence as a dictator in literature, like other potentates, he was not averse to a display of his authority: resembling in this particular Swift, and one or two other men of genius, who have had the bad taste to imagine that their talents elevated them above observance of the common rules of society. It must be also remarked, that in Johnson's time, the literary society of London was

much more confined than at present, and that he sat the Jupiter of a little circle, prompt, on the slightest contradiction, to launch the thunders of rebuke and sarcasm. He was, in a word, despotic, and despotism will occasionally lead the best dispositions into unbecoming abuse of power. It is not likely that any one will again enjoy, or have an opportunity of abusing, the singular degree of submission which was rendered to Johnson by all around him. The unreserved communications of friends, rather than the spleen of enemies, have occasioned his character being exposed in all its shadows, as well as its lights. But those, when summed and counted, amount only to a few narrow-minded prejudices concerning country and party, from which few ardent tempers remain entirely free, and some violences and solecisms in manners, which left his talents, morals, and benevolence, alike unimpeachable.

Of Rasselas, translated into so many languages, and so widely circulated through the literary world, the merits have been long justly appreciated. It was composed in solitude and sorrow; and the melancholy cast of feeling which it exhibits, sufficiently evinces the temper of the author's mind. The resemblance, in some respects, betwixt the tenor of the moral and that of Candide, is so striking, that Johnson himself admitted, that if the authors could possibly have seen each other's manuscript, they could not have escaped the charge of plagiarism. But they resemble each other. like a wholesome and a poisonous fruit. The object of the witty Frenchman is to lead to a distrust of the wisdom of the great Governor of the Universe, by presuming to arraign him of incapacity before the creatures of his will. Johnson uses arguments drawn from the same premises, with the benevolent view of encouraging men to look to another and a better world, for the satisfaction of wishes, which in this seem only to be awakened in order to be disappointed. The one is a fiend-a merry devil, we grant-who scoffs at, and derides human miseries; the other, a friendly though grave philosopher, who shows us the nothingness of earthly hopes, to teach us that our affections ought to be placed elsewhere.

The work can scarce be termed a narrative, being in a great measure void of incident; it is rather a set of moral dialogues on the various vicissitudes of human life, its follies, its fears, its hopes, and its wishes, and the disappointment in which all terminate. The style is in Johnson's best manner; enriched and rendered sonorous by the triads and quaternions which he so much loved, and balanced with an art which perhaps he derived from the learned Sir Thomas Brown. The reader may sometimes complain, with Boswell, that the unalleviated picture of human helplessness and misery, leaves sadness upon the mind after perusal. But the moral is to be found in the conclusion of the Vanity of Human Wishes, a poem which treats of the same melancholy subject, and closes with this sublime strain of morality:

Pour forth thy fervours for a healthful mind,
Obedient passions, and a will resign'd;

For Love, which scarce collective man can fill;
For Patience, sovereign o'er transmuted ill;
For Faith, that, panting for a happier seat,
Counts death kind nature's signal of retreat:
These goods for man the laws of Heaven ordain;

These goods He grants, who grants the power to gain;
With these celestial wisdom calms the mind,

And makes the happiness she cannot find.

FROM THE RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW.

A Voyage round the World, in the Years 1740, 1, 2, 3, 4, by George Anson, Esq., Commander in Chief of a Squadron of His Majesty's Ships, sent upon an Expedition to the South Sea. Compiled from Papers and other Materials of the Right Honourable George Lord Anson, and published under his direction, by Richard Walter, M. A. Chaplain of his Majesty's Ship the Centurion, in that Expedition. The Second Edition, with Charts of the Southern Part of South America, of Part of the Pacific Ocean, and of the Track of the Centurion round the World. London, 1748.

The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron, Commodore in a late Expedition round the World, containing an Account of the great Distresses suffered by himself and his Companions on the Coast of Patagonia, from the Year 1740, till their arrival in England, 1746. With a Description of St. Jago de Chili, and the Manners and Customs of the Inhabitants; also a Relation of the Loss of the Wager, Man of War, one of Admiral Anson's Squadron. Written by himself. Second Edition. London, 1768.

The

EMINENTLY conspicuous among those who have gained the palm of deserved celebrity, may be ranked the intrepid navigators, by whose persevering resolution, undaunted courage, and professional skill, the paths of discovery were laid open, and science was enriched with the choicest stores of nature, gleaned from realms that were before unknown. The gallant officer who upheld the honour of his native land, and the glory of her flag, was generally prompted by a desire of seeing his name enrolled among the deeds of the brave, and registered as the defender of his country's rights. But the enduring and indefatigable discoverer had a nobler aim in view -the extension of knowledge, and the civilization of mankind; and he has left to posterity a lasting fame, which can never pass away as long as the monuments of his research remain to perpetuate the remembrance of his enterprising spirit and patient investigation. Curiosity is strongly prevalent in our nature, from infancy to manhood-from maturity to old age, and hence arises the lively interest which is excited by the perusal of a book of voyages or travels-an interest which increases in proportion with the opportu