That such a man should have written one of Fluellen. Of all confessors, Boswell is the of the best books in the world, is strange most candid. Other men who have pretended enough. But this is not all. Many persons to lay open their own hearts-Rousseau, for who have conducted themselves foolishly in example, and Lord Byron-have evidently active life, and whose conversation has indi- written with a constant view to effect, and are cated no superior powers of mind, have writ- to be then most distrusted when they seem ten valuable books. Goldsmith was very just to be most sincere. There is scarcely any ly described by one of his contemporaries as man who would not rather accuse himself of an inspired idiot, and by another as a being, great crimes and of dark and tempestuous passions, than proclaim all his little vanities, "Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll." and all his wild fancies. It would be easier to La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. find a person who would avow actions like His blunders would not come in amiss among those of Cæsar Borgia or Danton, than one the stories of Hierocles. But these men at who would publish a day-dream like those of tained literary eminence in spite of their weak- Alnaschar and Malvolio. Those weaknesses nesses. Boswell attained it by reason of his which most men keep covered up in the most weaknesses. If he had not been a great fool, secret places of the mind, not to be disclosed he would never have been a great writer. to the eye of friendship or of love, were preWithout all the qualities which made him the cisely the weaknesses which Boswell paraded jest and the torment of those among whom he before all the world. He was perfectly frank, lived-without the officiousness, the inquisi- because the weakness of his understanding tiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the and the tumult of his spirit prevented him insensibility to all reproof, he never could have from knowing when he made himself ridicu produced so excellent a book. He was a slave, lous. His book resembles nothing so much proud of his servitude; a Paul Pry, convinced as the conversation of the inmates of the Pathat his own curiosity and garrulity were vir- lace of Truth. tues; an unsafe companion, who never scru- His fame is great, and it will, we have no J'ed to repay the most liberal hospitality by doubt, be lasting; but it is fame of a peculiar ti basest violation of confidence; a mankind, and indeed marvellously resembles infawithout delicacy, without shame, without sense my. We remember no other case in which the enough to know when he was hurting the feel-world has made so great a distinction between ings of others, or when he was exposing himself to derision; and because he was all this, he has, in an important department of literature, immeasurably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon, Alfieri, and his own idol Johnson.

a book and its author. In general, the book and the author are considered as one. To admire the book is to admire the author. The case of Boswell is an exception, we think the only exception, to this rule. His work is universally allowed to be interesting, instructive, eminentOf the talents which ordinarily raise men to ly original; yet it has brought him nothing but eminence as writers, he had absolutely none. contempt. All the world reads it, all the world There is not, in all his books, a single remark delights in it; yet we do not remember ever to of his own on literature, politics, religion, or have read or even to have heard any expressociety, which is not either commonplace or sion of respect and admiration for the man to absurd. His dissertations on hereditary gen- whom we owe so much instruction and amusetility, on the slave trade, and on the entailing ment. While edition after edition of his book of landed estates, may serve as examples. To was coming forth, his son, as Mr. Croker tells say that these passages are sophistical, would us, was ashamed of it, and hated to hear it be to pay them an extravagant compliment. mentioned. This feeling was natural and reaThey have no pretence to argument or even to sonable. Sir Alexander saw, that in proportion meaning. He has reported innumerable ob- to the celebrity of the work was the degradation servations made by himself in the course of of the author. The very editors of this unfor conversation. Of those observations we do tunate gentleman's books have forgotten their not remember one which is above the intellec-allegiance, and, like those Puritan casuists tual capacity of a boy of fifteen. He has printed many of his own letters, and in these letters he is always ranting or twaddling. Logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all those things which are generally considered as making a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but, as he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made him immortal.

Those parts of his book which, considered abstractedly, are most utterly worthless, are delightful when we read them as illustrations of the character of the writer. Bad in themselves, they are good dramatically, like the nonsense of Justice Shallow, the clipped Engush of Dr. Caius, or the misplaced consonants

who took arms by the authority of the king against his person, have attacked the writer while doing homage to the writings. Mr. Croker, for example, has published two thousand five hundred notes on the Life of Johnson, and yet scarcely ever mentions the biographer, whose performance he has taken such pains to illustrate, without some expression of contempt.

An ill-natured man Boswell certainly was not. Yet the malignity of the most malignan. satirist could scarcely cut deeper than his thoughtless loquacity. Having himself ne sensibility to derision and contempt, he took it for granted that all others were equally callous He was not ashamed to exhibit himself to the whole world as a common spy, a common tattler, a humble companion without the excuse of poverty, to tell a hundred stories of his owe

Johnson came up to London precisely at the time when the condition of a man of letters was most miserable and degraded. It was a dark night between two sunny days. The age of Mæcenases had passed away. The age of general curiosity and intelligence had not arrived. The number of readers is at present so great, that a popular author may subsist in comfort and opulence on the profits of his works. In the reigns of William the Third, of Anne, and of George the First, even such men

pertness and folly, and of the insults which his pertness and folly brought upon him. It was natural that he should show little discretion in cases in which the feelings or the honour of others might be concerned. No man, surely, ever published such stories respecting persons whom he professed to love and revere. He would infallibly have made his hero as contemptible as he has made himself, had not this hero really possessed some moral and intellectual qualities of a very high order. The best proof that Johnson was really an extraor-as Congreve and Addison would scarcely have dinary man, is, that his character, instead of being degraded, has, on the whole, been decidedly raised by a work in which all his vices and weaknesses are exposed more unsparingly than they ever were exposed by Churchill or by Kenrick.

been able to live like gentlemen by the mere sale of their writings. But the deficiency of the natural demand for literature was, at the close of the seventeenth and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, more than made up by artificial encouragement, by a vast system Johnson grown old, Johnson in the fulness of bounties and premiums. There was, perof his fame and in the enjoyment of a compe- haps, never a time at which the rewards of tent fortune, is better known to us than any literary merit were so splendid-at which men other man in history. Every thing about him, who could write well found such easy admit his coat, his wig, his figure, his face, his scro-tance into the most distinguished society and fula, his St. Vitus's dance, his rolling walk, his to the highest honours of the state. The chiefs blinking eye, the outward signs which too of both the great parties into which the kingclearly marked his approbation of his dinner, dom was divided patronised literature with his insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and veal- emulous munificence. Congreve, when he had pie with plums, his inextinguishable thirst for scarcely attained his majority, was rewarded tea, his trick of touching the posts as he for his first comedy with places which made walked, his mysterious practice of treasuring him independent for life. Smith, though his up scraps of orange-peel, his morning slum- Hippolytus and Phædra failed, would have bers, his midnight disputations, his contortions, been consoled with £300 a year, but for his his mutterings, his gruntings, his puffings, his own folly. Rowe was not only poet-laureate, vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence, his sar- but land-surveyor of the customs in the port castic wit, his vehemence, his insolence, his of London, clerk of the council to the Prince fits of tempestuous rage, his queer inmates, old of Wales, and secretary of the Presentations Mr. Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat to the Lord Chancellor. Hughes was secretary Hodge and the negro Frank-all are as fami- to the Commissions of the Peace. Ambrose liar to us as the objects by which we have been Philips was judge of the Prerogative Court in surrounded from childhood. But we have no Ireland. Locke was Commissioner of Appeals minute information respecting those years of and of the Board of Trade. Newton was Johnson's life during which his character and Master of the Mint. Stepney and Prior were his manners became immutably fixed. We employed in embassies of high dignity and know him not as he was known to the men of importance. Gay, who commenced life as his own generation, but as he was known to apprentice to a silk-mercer, became a secremen whose father he might have been. That tary of legation at five-and-twenty. It was to celebrated club of which he was the most dis- a poem on the Death of Charles II., and to the tinguished member contained few persons who City and Country Mouse, that Montague owed could remember a time when his fame was not his introduction into public life, his earldom, fully established and his habits completely his garter, and his auditorship of the Excheformed. He had made himself a name in lite-quer. Swift, but for the unconquerable prejurature while Reynolds and the Wartons were still boys. He was about twenty years older than Burke, Goldsmith, and Gerard Hamilton; about thirty years older than Gibbon, Beauclerk, and Langton; and about forty years older than Lord Stowell, Sir William Jones, and Windham. Boswell and Mrs. Thrale, the two writers from whom we derive most of our knowledge respecting him, never saw him till long after he was fifty years old, till most of his great works had become classical, and till the pension bestowed on him by Lord Bute had placed him above poverty. Of those eminent men who were his most intimate associates towards the close of his life, the only one, as far as we remember, who knew him during the first ten or twelve years of his residence in the capital, was David Garrick; and it does not appear that, during those years, David Garrick saw much of his fellow-townsman.

dice of the queen, would have been a bishop. Oxford, with his white staff in his hand, passed through the crowd of his suitors to welcome Parnell, when that ingenious writer deserted the Whigs. Steele was a commissioner of stamps and a member of Parliament. Arthur Mainwaring was a commissioner of the cus toms and auditor of the imprest. Tickell was secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland. Addison was secretary of state.

This liberal patronage was brought into fashion, as it seems, by the magnificent Dorset, who alone, of all the noble versifiers in the court of Charles the Second, possessed talents for composition which would have made him eminent without the aid of a coronet. Monta gue owed his elevation to the favour of Dorset, and imitated through the whole course of his life the liberality to which he was himself so greatly indebted. The Tory leaders, Harley

the fate of more than one writer, who, if he had lived thirty years earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings of the Kit-Cat or the Scri blerus Club, would have sat in the Parlia ment, and would have been intrusted with embassies to the High Allies; who, if he had lived in our time, would have received from the booksellers several hundred pounds a year.

and Bolingbroke in particular, vied with the chiefs of the Whig party in zeal for the encouragement of letters. But soon after the accession of the house of Hanover a change took place. The supreme power passed to a man who cared little for poetry or eloquence. The importance of the House of Commons was constantly on the increase. The government was under the necessity of bartering, for par- As every climate has its peculiar diseases, liamentary support, much of that patronage so every walk of life has its peculiar temptawhich had been employed in fostering literary tions. The literary character, assuredly, has merit; and Walpole was by no means inclined always had its share of faults-vanity, jealousy, to divert any part of the fund of corruption to morbid sensibility. To these faults were now purposes which he considered as idle. He superadded all the faults which are commonly had eminent talents for government and for found in men whose livelihood is precarious, debate; but he had paid little attention to books, and whose principles are exposed to the trial and felt little respect for authors. One of the of severe distress. All the vices of the gamcoarse jokes of his friend, Sir Charles Han- bler and of the beggar were blended with those bury Williams, was far more pleasing to him of the author. The prizes in the wretched lot than Thomson's Seasons or Richardson's Pa- tery of book-making were scarcely less ruinous mela. He had observed that some of the dis- than the blanks. If good fortune came, it came tinguished writers whom the favour of Halifax in such a manner that it was almost certain to had turned into statesmen, had been mere en- be abused. After months of starvation and decumbrances to their party, dawdlers in office, spair, a full third night, or a well-received dediand mutes in Parliament. During the whole cation, filled the pocket of the lean, ragged, un. course of his administration, therefore, he washed poet with guineas. He hastened to scarcely patronised a single man of genius. enjoy those luxuries with the images of which The best writers of the age gave all their sup- his mind had been haunted while sleeping port to the opposition, and contributed to excite amidst the cinders, and eating potatoes at the that discontent which, after plunging the nation Irish ordinary in Shoe Lane. A week of tainto a foolish and unjust war, overthrew the verns soon qualified him for another year of minister to make room for men less able and night cellars. Such was the life of Savage, equally unscrupulous. The opposition could of Boyce, and of a crowd of others. Somereward its eulogists with little more than pro- times blazing in gold-laced hats and waistcoats, mises and caresses. St. James would give sometimes lying in bed because their coats had nothing, Leicester-house had nothing to give. gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats beThus at the time when Johnson commenced cause their linen was in pawn; sometimes his literary career, a writer had little to hope from drinking Champagne and Tokay with Betty the patronage of powerful individuals. The Careless; sometimes standing at the window patronage of the public did not yet furnish the of an eating-house in Porridge island, to snuff means of comfortable subsistence. The prices up the scent of what they could not afford to paid by booksellers to authors were so low, taste;-they knew luxury; they knew beggary; that a man of considerable talents and unre- but they never knew comfort. These men mitting industry could do little more than pro- were irreclaimable. They looked on a regular vide for the day which was passing over him. and frugal life with the same aversion which The lean kine had eaten up the fat kine. an old gipsy or a Mohawk hunter feels for a The thin and withered ears had devoured the stationary abode, and for the restraints and good ears. The season of rich harvest was securities of civilized communities. They over, and the period of famine had begun. All were as untameable, as much wedded to their that is squalid and miserable might now be desolate freedom, as the wild ass. They could summed up in the one word-Poet. That no more be broken in to the offices of social word denoted a creature dressed like a scare- man, than the unicorn could be trained to serve crow, familiar with compters and spunging- and abide by the crib. It was well if they did houses, and perfectly qualified to decide on the not, like beasts of a still fiercer race, tear the comparative merits of the Common Side in the hands which ministered to their necessities. King's Bench prison, and of Mount Scoundrel To assist them was impossible; and the most in the Fleet. Even the poorest pitied him; benevolent of mankind at length became weary and they well might pity him. For if their of giving relief, which was dissipated with the condition was equally abject, their aspirings wildest profusion as soon as it had been rewere not equally high, nor their sense of insult ceived. If a sum was bestowed on the wretchequally acute. To lodge in a garret up four ed adventurer, such as, properly husbanded, pair of stairs, to dine in a cellar amongst foot- might have supplied him for six months, it was men out of place; to translate ten hours a day instantly spent in strange freaks of sensuality, for the wages of a ditcher; to be hunted by and before forty-eight hours had elapsed, the bailiffs from one haunt of beggary and pesti-poet was again pestering all his acquaintances lence to another, from Grub street to St. George's Fields, and from St. George's Fields to the alleys behind St. Martin's church; to sleep on a bulk in June, and amidst the ashes of a glasshouse in December, to die in an hostal, and to be buried in a parish vault, was

for twopence to get a plate of shin of beef at a subterraneous cook-shop. If his friends gave him an asylum in their houses, those houses were forthwith turned into bagnios and taverns, All order was destroyed, all business was sus pended. The most good-natured host began

his house into a place of refuge for a crowd of
wretched old creatures who could find no other
asylum; nor could all their peevishness and
ingratitude weary out his benevolence. But the
pangs of wounded vanity seemed to him ridi-
culous; and he scarcely felt sufficient compas-
sion even for the pangs of wounded affection.
He had seen and felt so much of sharp misery,
that he was not affected by paltry vexations;
and he seemed to think that everybody ought
to be as much hardened to those vexations as
himself. He was angry with Boswell for com-
plaining of a headache; with Mrs. Thrale for
grumbling about the dust on the road, or the
smell of the kitchen. These were, in his phrase,
"foppish lamentations," which people ought
to be ashamed to utter in a world so full of
misery. Goldsmith crying because the Good-
natured Man had failed, inspired him with no
pity. Though his own health was not good, he
detested and despised valetudinarians. Even
great pecuniary losses, unless they reduced
the loser absolutely to beggary, moved him
very little.
People whose hearts had been
softened by prosperity might cry, he said, for
such events; but all that could be expected of
a plain man was not to laugh.

statue had overshadowed the whole seacoast and whose might seemed equal to a contest with armies, contract himself to the dinnensions of his small prison, and lie there the helpless slave of the charm of Solomon.

Johnson was in the habit of sifting with extreme severity the evidence for all stories which were merely odd. But when they were not only odd but miraculous, his severity re laxed. He began to be credulous precisely at the point where the most credulous people begin to be skeptical. It is curious to observe, both in his writings and in his conversation, the contrast between the disdainful manner in which he rejects unauthenticated anecdotes, even when they are consistent with the general laws of nature, and the respectful manner in which he mentions the wildest stories relating to the invisible world. A man who told him of a waterspout or a meteoric stone generally had the lie direct given him for his pains. A man who told him of a prediction or a dream wonder fully accomplished, was sure of a courteous hearing. "Johnson," observes Hogarth, "like King David, says in his haste that all men are liars." "His incredulity," says Mrs. Thrale, "amounted almost to disease." She tells us how A person who troubled himself so little he browbeat a gentleman, who gave him an about the smaller grievances of human life, account of a hurricane in the West Indies, and was not likely to be very attentive to the feel-a poor Quaker, who related some strange cir ings of others in the ordinary intercourse of cumstance about the red-hot balls fired at the society. He could not understand how a sar-siege of Gibraltar. "It is not so. It cannot casm or a reprimand could make any man really unhappy. "My dear doctor," said he to Goldsmith, "what harm does it do to a man to call him Holofernes?" "Poh, ma'am," he exclaimed to Mrs. Carter, "who is the worse for being talked of uncharitably?" Politeness has been well defined as benevolence in small things. Johnson was impolite, not because he wanted benevolence, but because small things appeared smaller to him than to people who had never known what it was to live for four-himself on a ghost-hunt to Cock-lane, and was pence half-penny a day.

The characteristic peculiarity of his intelleet was the union of great powers with low prejudices. If we judged of him by the best parts of his mind, we should place him almost as high as he was placed by the idolatry of Boswell; if by the worst parts of his mind, we should place him even below Boswell himself. Where he was not under the influence of some strange scruple, or some domineering passion, which prevented him from boldly and fairly investigating a subject, he was a wary and accurate reasoner, a little too much inclined to skepticism, and a little too fond of paradox. No man was less likely to be imposed upon by fallacies in argument, or by exaggerated statements of fact. But, if, while he was beating down sophisms, and exposing false testimony, some childish prejudices, such as would excite laughter in a well-managed nursery, came across him, he was smitten as

if by enchantment. His mind dwindled away under the spell from gigantic elevation to dwarfish littleness. Those who had lately beer. admiring its amplitude and its force, were now as much astonished at its strange narrowness and feebleness, as the fisherman, in the Arabian tale, when he saw the genie, whose

be true. Don't tell that story again. You cannot think how poor a figure you make in telling it." He once said, half jestingly we suppose, that for six months he refused to credit the fact of the earthquake at Lisbon, and that he still believed the extent of the calamity to be greatly exaggerated. Yet he related with a grave face how old Mr. Cave of St. John's Gate saw a ghost, and how this ghost was something of a shadowy being. He went

angry with John Wesley for not following up another scent of the same kind with proper spirit and perseverance. He rejects the Celtic genealogies and poems without the least hesi tation; yet he declares himself willing to be lieve the stories of the second sight. If he had examined the claims of the Highland seers with half the severity with which he sifted the evidence for the genuineness of Fingal, he would, we suspect, have come away from Scotland with a mind fully made up. In his Lives of the Poets, we find that he is unwilling to give credit to the accounts of Lord Ros common's early proficiency in his studies; but he tells with great solemnity an absurd ro mance about some intelligence preternaturally impressed on the mind of that nobleman. He avows himself to be in great doubt about the truth of the story, and ends by warning his readers not wholly to slight such impressions.

Many of his sentiments on religious subjects are worthy of a liberal and enlarged mind. He could discern clearly enough the folly and meanness of all bigotry except his own When he spoke of the scruples of the Puri tans, he spoke like a person who had really obtained an insight into the divine philosophy of the New Testament, and who considered