W

His introduction to the THRALES, about two years prior to this interview, was a great piece of good fortune for JOHNSON. Mr. THRALE was a very opulent brewer, and member of parliament for Southwark. Both he and Mrs. THRALE (afterwards Mrs. Piozzi), conceived such a partiality for JOHNSON, that he soon came to be considered as one of the family; and had an apartment appropriated to him, both in their town-house and their villa at Streatham. Nothing could be more fortunate for JOHNSON than this connexion. He had at Mr. THRALE's all the comforts and even luxuries of life; his melancholy was diverted and his irregular habits lessened by association with an agreeable and well-ordered family. He was treated with the utmost respect and even affection. The vivacity of Mrs. THRALE's literary talk roused him to cheerfulness and exertion even when they were alone. But this was not often the case; for he found here a constant succession of what gave him the highest enjoyment, the society of the learned, the witty, and the eminent in every way; who were assembled in numerous companies, called forth his wonderful powers, and gratified him with admiration to which no man could be insensible*.'

From 1769 to 1779, when he began to publish his Lives of the Poets,' the labours of JOHNSON were almost exclusively political. They are distinguished by that nervous ex

BOSWELL, vol. ii. p. 96.

pression and force of style for which JOHNSON was always remarkable; but as he advocated on these occasions the intolerant principles of tory government in church and state, arrogance often supplies the place of argument, and truth is distorted by prejudice or bespattered with invective. It has been no loss to the country, nor any damage to the reputation of JOHNSON, that his friends did not succeed in their endeavours to bring him into parlia

ment.

In 1773, JOHNSON made the tour of the Hebrides, in company with his enthusiastic admirer and biographer, JAMES BOSWELL; and in the autumn of the following year he published his account of that excursion, under the title of A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.' It is a work of great elegance and observation, and freer from the author's known prejudices and partialities than most of his other performances. His decision in this work against the authenticity of OSSIAN, greatly irritated the alleged translator, Mr. MACPHERSON, who is reported even to have threatened JOHNSON with personal violence. But the literary Hercules answered his letter in a tone of such reprimanding severity and stern defiance, that MACPHERSON was overawed.-In 1775, through the interest of Lord NORTH, JOHNSON was complimented with the degree of LL. D. from the university of Oxford: a similar honour had been voluntarily conferred upon him some years before by the senate of Dublin, but he forbore to assume the title.

Of his last literary undertaking, the Lives of the Poets,' begun in 1779, and completed in 1780, it is impossible to speak too highly. Taken biographically or critically, they are gems of inestimable price, and form an exquisite addendum to the cabinet of British literature.

Dr. JOHNSON died on the 13th of December, 1785, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. He had suffered a partial paralysis in June 1783, but his robust constitution prevailed over it. Asthma, however, and dropsy succeeded and gradually wore him out. He regarded little the inconveniences or pains of illness, but was wholly occupied in the care of prolonging his existence, and esteemed all agonies as trifles when compared with the cessation of being. His terror of death which had accompanied him through life, gradually settled as his time approached into a peaceful resignation; and he escaped so tranquilly, that the attendants about his person did not perceive the moment in which he rendered up his breath. JOHNSON's character is so well known that it would be superfluous to trace it here. Of his biographers, Sir JOHN HAWKINS has executed his task the most distortedly, and BOSWELL has given the most flattering portrait. Sir JoHN's canvas is overcharged on the dark side; but BOSWELL, though partial, may be trusted. The Anecdotes of Mrs. HESTER LYNCH PIOZZI are often unfaithful and inaccurate.

To gigantic physical proportions JOHNSON united a stupendous intellect, but it was held in thrall by prejudice and superstition. Ac

customed early to the contempt of ignorance, he gave no quarter to inferior spirits, and was dogmatical and domineering in argument. He delighted in contradicting others, but could not bear to be contradicted; and when he lost his temper he forgot his dignity, and vented indiscriminately harsh invectives and insulting personalities. But when the gust of passion subsided, he would frequently apologize for these. He seemed sometimes to envy the good fortune of others, but it was rather his malady that forced him upon the comparison, than any feeling of dissatisfaction at his neighbour's happiness; and he was not inaccessible to flattery. His religious principles were highchurch, and his doctrine of government arbitrary. But after all he was a great and good man. He exercised habitual and extensive charity, and much of his moroseness and acrimony was the effect of his morbid temperament. A constitutional melancholy sat like an incubus on his giant mind, and the cup of his enjoyment was drugged with a perpetual bitterness. Life, to him, was a constant alternation of bodily and mental misery; and his unengaging person and repulsive manners excluded him from many sympathies which would have

been a cordial to his existence.

As a writer, his fame can only perish with the language of his country, for he established both together.

We shall conclude these pages with Mr. BOSWELL'S account of the origination of the RAMBLER, in which JOHNSON's characteristic

piety is strikingly exemplified. It was indeed a remarkable peculiarity in JOHNSON, that he never engaged in any great undertaking, without first imploring the divine protection and assistance by a prayer.

In 1750, he came forth in the character for which he was eminently qualified, a majestic teacher of moral and religious wisdom. The vehicle which he chose was that of a periodical paper, which he knew had been, upon former occasions, employed with great success. The TATLER, SPECTATOR, and GUARDIAN, were the last of the kind published in England, which had stood the test of a long trial; and such an interval had now elapsed since their publication, as made him justly think that, to many of his readers, this form of instruction would, in some degree, have the advantage of novelty. A few days before the first of his Essays came out, there started another competitor for fame in the same form, under the title of "The Tatler Revived," which I believe born but to die." JOHNSON was, I think, not very happy in the choice of his title"THE RAMBLER;" which certainly is not suited to a series of grave and moral discourses; which the Italians have literally, but ludicrously, translated by Il Vagabondo; and which has been lately assumed as the denomination of a vehicle of licentious tales, "The Rambler's Magazine." He gave Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS the following account of its getting this name: What must be done, Sir, will be done. When I was to begin publishing that paper,

was

66

66