some disorders of body and disturbances of mind very near to madness. His life, he says, from his earliest youth, was wasted in a morning bed; and his reigning sin was a general sluggishness, to which he was always inclined, and in part of his life almost compelled, by morbid melancholy and weariness of mind. This was his constitutional malady, derived perhaps from his father, who was at times overcast with a gloom that bordered on insanity. When to this it is added that Johnson, about the age of twenty, drew up a description of his infirmities for Dr. Swinfen, at that time an eminent physician in Staffordshire, and received an answer to his letter, importing that the symptoms indicated a future privation of reason, who can wonder that he was troubled with melancholy and dejection of spirit? An apprehension of the worst calamity that can befall human nature hung over him all the rest of his life, like the sword of the tyrant suspended over his guest. In his sixtieth year he had a mind to write the history of his melancholy; but he desisted, not knowing whether it would not too much disturb him. In a Latin poem, however, to which he has prefixed as a title, Know Thyself, he has left a picture of himself, drawn with as much truth and as firm a hand as can be seen in the portraits of Hogarth or Sir Joshua Reynolds. It is hoped that a translation, or, rather, imitation of so curious a piece will not be improper in this place.

KNOW THYSELF.

(AFTER REVISING AND ENLARGING THE ENGLISH LEXICON OR DICTIONARY.)

WHEN Scaliger, whole years of labour past,
Beheld his Lexicon complete at last,

And weary of his task, with wond'ring eyes,
Saw from words piled on words a fabric rise,
He cursed the industry, inertly strong,
In creeping toil that could persist so long,

And if, enraged he cried, Heaven meant to shed
Its keenest vengeance on the guilty head,
The drudgery of words the damn'd would know,
Doom'd to write Lexicons in endless wo.*

Yes, you had cause, great genius, to repent;
"You lost good days that might be better spent ;"
You well might grudge the hours of ling'ring pain,
And view your learned labours with disdain.
To you were given the large, expanded mind,
The flame of genius, and the taste refined;
Mid rolling worlds the Great First Cause explore;
To fix the eras of recorded time,

And live in every age and every clime;

Record the chiefs who propp'd their country's cause;
Who founded empires, and established laws;
To learn whate'er the sage, with virtue fraught,
Whate'er the Muse of moral wisdom taught.
These were your quarry; these to you were known,
And the world's ample volume was your own.

Yet warn'd by me, ye pigmy wits, beware,
Nor with immortal Scaliger compare.
For me, though his example strike my view,
Oh! not for me his footsteps to pursue.
Whether first Nature, unpropitious, cold,
This clay compounded in a ruder mould;
Or the slow current loitering at my heart,
No gleam of wit or fancy can impart;
Whate'er the cause, from me no numbers flow
No visions warm me, and no raptures glow.
A mind like Scaliger's, superior still,
No grief could conquer, no misfortunes chill.
Though for the maze of words his native skies
He seem'd to quit, 'twas but again to rise;
To mount once more to the bright source of day,
And view the wonders of th' ethereal way.
The love of fame his generous bosom fired;
Each science hail'd him, and each muse inspired.
For him the sons of learning trimm'd the bays,
And nations grew harmonious in his praise,

My task perform'd, and all my labours o'er,
For me what lot has Fortune now in store?
The listless will succeeds, that worst disease,
The rack of indolence, the sluggish ease.

* See Scaliger's Epigram on this subject, communicated without doubt by Dr. Johnson, Gent. Mag., 1748, p. 8.

Care grows on care, and o'er my aching brain
Black melancholy pours her morbid train.
No kind relief, no lenitive at hand,

I seek at midnight clubs the social band.

But midnight clubs, where wit with noise conspires,
Where Comus revels, and where wine inspires,
Delight no more: I seek my lonely bed,

And call on sleep to sooth my languid head.
But sleep from these sad lids flies far away;
I mourn all night, and dread the coming day.
Exhausted, tired, I throw my eyes around,
To find some vacant spot on classic ground;
And soon, vain hope! I form a grand design;
Languor succeeds, and all my powers decline.
If science open not her richest vein,

Without materials all our toil is vain.
A form to rugged stone when Phidias gives,
Beneath his touch a new creation lives.
Remove his marble, and his genius dies;
With nature, then, no breathing statue vies.

Whate'er I plan, I feel my powers confined
By Fortune's frown and penury of mind.
boast no knowledge glean'd with toil and strife,
That bright reward of a well-acted life.

I view myself, while Reason's feeble light
Shoots a pale glimmer through the gloom of night,
While passions, error, phantoms of the brain,
And vain opinions, fill the dark domain;

A dreary void, where fears with grief combined,
Waste all within, and desolate the mind.

What then remains? Must I, in slow decline,
To mute, inglorious ease old age resign?
Or, bold ambition kindling in my breast,
Attempt some arduous task? Or, were it best,
Brooding o'er Lexicons to pass the day,
And in that labour drudge my life away?

Such is the picture for which Dr. Johnson sat to himself. He gives the prominent features of his character; his lassitude, his morbid melancholy, his love of fame, his dejection, his tavern parties, and his wandering reveries, about which so much has been written; all are painted in miniature, but in vivid colours, by his own hand. His idea of writing more dictionaries was not merely said in verse,

Mr. Hamilton, who was at that time an eminent printer, and well acquainted with Dr. Johnson, remembers that he engaged in a Commercial Dictionary, and, as appears by the receipts in his possession, was paid his price for several sheets; but he soon relinquished the undertaking. It is probable that he found himself not sufficiently versed in that branch of knowledge.

He was again reduced to the expedient of short compositions for the supply of the day. The writer of this narrative has now before him a letter, in Dr. Johnson's handwriting, which shows the distress and melancholy situation of the man who had written the Rambler, and finished the great work of his Dictionary. The letter is directed to Mr. Richardson (the author of Clarissa), and is as follows:

"SIR,

"I am obliged to entreat your assistance. I am now under an arrest for five pounds eighteen shillings. Mr. Strahan, from whom I should have received the necessary help in this case, is not at home; and I am afraid of not finding Mr. Millar. If you will be so good as to send me this sum, I will very gratefully repay you, and add it to all former obligations.

"I am, sir,

"Your most obedient

"And most humble servant,

'Gough Square, 16th March."

"SAMUEL JOHNSON.

In the margin of this letter there is a memorandum in these words: "March 16, 1756, sent six guineas. Witness, Wm. Richardson." For the honour of an admired writer, it is to be regretted that we do not find a more liberal entry. To his friend in distress he sent eight shillings more than was wanted. Had an incident of this kind occurred in one of his romances, Richardson would have known how to grace

his hero; but in fictitious scenes, generosity costs the writer nothing.

About this time Johnson contributed several papers to a periodical miscellany, called "The VISITER," from motives which are highly honourable to him, a compassionate regard for the late Mr. Christopher Smart. The criticism on Pope's Epitaphs appeared in that work. In a short time after, he became a reviewer in the Literary Magazine, under the auspices of the late Mr. Newberry, a man of a projecting head, good taste, and great industry. This employment engrossed but little of Johnson's time. He resigned himself to indolence, took no exercise, rose about two, and then received the visits of his friends. Authors long since forgotten waited on him as their oracle, and he gave responses in the chair of criticism. He listened to the complaints, the schemes, and the hopes and fears of a crowd of inferior writers, "who," he said, in the words of Roger Ascham, “lived, men knew not how, and died obscure, men marked not when." He believed that he could give a better history of Grub-street than any man living. His house was filled with a succession of visiters till four or five in the evening. During the whole time he presided at his tea-table. Tea was his favourite beverage; and when the late Jonas Hanway pronounced his anathema against the use of tea, Johnson rose in defence of his habitual practice, delaring himself “in that article a hardened sinner, who had for years diluted his meals with the infusion of that fascinating plant; whose teakettle had no time to cool; who with tea solaced the midnight hour, and with tea welcomed the morning."

The proposal for a new edition of Shakspeare, which had formerly miscarried, was resumed in the year 1756. The booksellers readily agreed to his terms, and subscription tickets were issued out. For undertaking this work, money, he confessed, was the inciting motive. His friends exerted themselves