Bids Lust and Folly tremble on the throne." Marvel, by opposing the ministry and its measures, created himself many enemies, and made himself very obnoxious to the government: yet Charles II. took great delight in his conversation, and tried all, means to win him over to his side, but in vain; nothing being ever able to shake his resolution. There were many instances of his firmness in resisting the offers of the court, in which he showed himself proof against all temptations. We pray God that the sin of Marvel's death did not rest with the great ones of those times; but it was strange and sudden. He did not leave wherewith to bury the sheath of such a noble spirit: but his constituents furnished forth a decent funeral, and would have erected a monument to his memory in the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, where he was interred; but the rector, blinded by the dust of royalty to the merits of the man, refused the necessary permission. Marvel's name is remembered, though the rector's has been long forgotten.† Wood tells us, that Marvel was in his conversation very modest, and of few words; and Cooke, the writer of his life, observes that he was very reserved among those whom he did not know, but a most delightful and improving companion among his friends. John Aubrey, who knew him personally, thus describes him: "He was of a middling stature, pretty strong set, roundish, cherry-cheeked, hazle-eyed, brown-haired." He was (as Wood also says) in conversation very modest, and of a very few words. He was wont to say that he would not drink high or freely with any one with whom he would not trust his life. Marvel died in 1678, in his fifty-eighth year, not without the strongest suspicions of having been poisoned; for he was always very temperate, and of a healthful and strong constitution to the last. On the death of this rector, however, the monument and inscription was placed on the north wall of the church, near the spot where he is supposed to lie. PERSON AND HABITS OF CALVIN. CALVIN ALVIN was not of large stature; his complexion was pale, and rather brown; even to his last moments his eyes were peculiarly bright, and indicative of his penetrating genius. He knew nothing of luxury in his outward life, but was fond of the greatest neatness, as became his thorough simplicity; his manner of living was so arranged, that he showed himself equally averse to extravagance and parsimony; he took little nourishment, such being the weakness of his stomach that, for many years, he contented himself with one meal a day. Of sleep he had almost none; his memory was incredible; he immediately recognized, after many years, those whom he had once seen; and when he had been interrupted for several hours, in some work about which he was employed, he could immediately resume and continue it, without reading again what he had before written. Of the numerous details connected with the business of his office, he never forgot even the most trifling, and this notwithstanding the incredible multitude of his affairs. His judgment was so acute and correct in regard to the most opposite concerns about which his advice was asked, that he often seemed to possess the gift of looking into the future. I never remember to have heard that any one who followed his counsel went wrong. He despised fine speaking, and was rather abrupt in his language; but he wrote admirably, and no theologian of his time expressed himself so clearly, so impressively and accurately as he, and yet he labored as much as any one of his cotemporaries, or of the fathers. For his fluency he was indebted to the several studies of his youth, and to the natural acuteness of his genius, which had been still further increased by the practice of dictation, so that proper and dignified expressions never failed him, whether he was writing or speaking. He never, in any wise, altered the doctrine which he first adopted, but remained true to the last -a thing which can be said of few theologians of this period.-Henry's Calvin. THERE never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the most violent; for a bee is not a busier animal than a blockihead. LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHNSON. IN HIS EARLY CAREER IN LONDON. N commercial countries, great cities answer a purpose very similar to that of the heart in the animal system: for, as in this case, in every part there is found a current tending toward the heart, as well as a counter current, by which vitality is diffused over the whole system; so in that, the metropolis levies its contributions on every part, and also imparts its meliorating influence to all. But cities are more especially places of consumption than of production. Thither the productions of the rural regions tend with a steady and deep current, which goes thither not to return again; while the contributions of city to country are much less considerable, whether in bulk or essential value. Even the population of great cities are drawn largely from extramural parts, where the human product, as well as others, seems to flourish more than in the pent-up bounds and vitiated atmosphere of the town. The crude materials of an active and elevated community are evidently produced in the highest perfection in the rustic salubrity and hardy independence of the open country; though, generally, it is in the city that genius is developed as well as expended. Biographical history attests the fact, that a large proportion of those who have become conspicuous in great cities, have passed their early days in the quiet of some country town, or in some rustic dwelling away from the busy haunts of men. Our story leads us to an illustration of this truth. One day, early in the spring of 1737, the stage-coach from Lichfield brought up to London two young gentlemen who had come thither to try their fortunes in the metropolis. One of them, a youth just verging to manhood, had been sent up by his father, a retired soldier, to complete his academical studies, under the direction of an accomplished instructor, and then to devote himself to the legal profession. The other was more advanced in life, having arrived at mature manhood, and had now come to cast himself into the vortex of the town, and try his fortune as a literary adventurer. These two individuals were DAVID GARRICK and SAMUEL JOHNSON. They came, commended by a letter from the benevolent Mr. WalmA* cately mentioned in the letter of introduction, especially in relation to an original tragedy in his possession; and he was emphatically commended as "a very good scholar and poet," and the hope expressed that he would turn out "a very fine tragedy-writer." Whether this letter procured any advantage for Johnson from the person addressed is at best doubtful; nothing further is known of the matter, though some have believed that this Mr. Colson was the Gelidus portrayed with so much truthful severity in the twentyfourth number of the Rambler. Johnson had come to London not merely to try his fortune, but to force it there. He could not afford to fail in this instance, for he had but little to expect anywhere else; and he had now two mouths to fill, to say nothing of a needy step-daughter, and an aged mother, now, by the death of her other son, left with only himself to depend on. Among the qualifications for his new position that he had brought with him, one of the most valuable was the art of living at minimum expenses, which he now reduced to practice. He took lodgings at the house of a Mr. Norris, in Exeter-street, adjoining Catharine-street, in the Strand. Of his daily expenses he gives the following account: "I dined very well for eightpence, with very good company, at the 'Pine Apple,' in New-street, just by. Several of them had traveled. They expected to meet every day, but did not know one another's names. It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank wine; but I had a cut of meat for sixpence, and bread for a penny, and gave the waiter a penny; so that I was quite well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing." While at Birmingham, he had become somewhat acquainted with an Irish painter, whom he described as "a very sensible man, who perfectly understood common affairs; a man of a great deal of knowledge of the world, fresh from life, not strained through books." According to this man's estimate of things," thirty pounds a-year was enough to enable a man to live there without being contemptible. He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. He said a man might live in a garret for eighteenpence a-week; few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was easy to say, 'I am to be found at such a place.' By spending threepence in a coffee-house, he might be for some hours every day in very good company; he might dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper. On clean-shirt days he went abroad and paid visits." Just how far Johnson practiced upon his friend's system of economy, he had too much sensibility and good taste to state definitely; it is probable that his secret history during this period would not have been less curious and instructive than was that of the Irish artist. But he bore the whole of it with fortitude, and maintained in his deepest depression the spirit of independent manhood. How he employed himself on his first coming to London is not certainly known. It is related that Mr. Walmsley gave him a letter of introduction to Lintot, his bookseller, and that Johnson wrote some for him. He also called on another bookseller, named Wilcox, who, when informed of his intention to gain a livelihood by literature, gazed significantly at his giant frame and remarked: "You had better buy a porter's knot." Of this man, however, Johnson declared: "He was one of my best friends." Nearly four months after his arrival in London, he addressed a note to Cave, proposing to translate from the original Italian Father Sarpi's "History of the Council of Trent," with the notes of Le Courayer, from the French. The account of this business will occur in another place. This notice of it is here introduced to indicate the manner in which he was occupied, and the kind of efforts he put forth to get himself forward in life. In all this dismal obscurity there was one circumstance that afforded some mitigation of its gloom. He was acquainted with Mr. Henry Hervey, a man of good family and of genteel manners, who had served in the army and been stationed at Lichfield, where Johnson knew him. At the house of this gentleman he was frequently entertained, and had an opportunity of meeting cultivated company. This kindness was highly appreciated by Johnson; so that, while he confessed that his friend was a vicious man, he declared, “if you call a dog Hervey I shall love him.” At this time it seems he had written but three acts of Irene; and as he was not otherwise occupied, and also depended on that production for both present relief and future fame, he directed his attention more closely to it. For this purpose he changed his lodgings to Greenwich, and there, in almost absolute solitude, though daily jostled by the unknown multitude, he labored assiduously and in hope upon his favorite theme. He was accustomed to compose while walking in the park, and afterward to reduce to writing what he had thus elaborated. In the latter part of the summer he returned to Lichfield, where he remained three months; and during this time "Irene" was completed. At the end of that period he returned to London, taking Mrs. Johnson with him, but leaving her daughter, Miss Lucy Porter, now a grownup young woman, with his aged mother at Lichfield. His first lodgings after his return were in Woodstock-street, Hanoversquare, and afterward in Castle-street, near Cavendish-square. Of his private life for a long time after his settlement in the metropolis we have but scanty accounts; enough, however, to indicate that he was no stranger to want in its most painful form. Johnson's correspondence with Cave, the publisher of the “Gentleman's Maga zine," has already been noticed. We are now to follow him into a closer intimacy with that somewhat remarkable personage. It is probable that from a very early stage of its career, (it was then in its sixth year,) the magazine had found its way to Lichfield, and was there esteemed as highly as in the metropolis itself. It is certain that Johnson had become acquainted with it before he left home, and though it seems to have appeared to him as the focus of literature, yet from the beginning he saw and pointed out its defects, and proposed measures for their removal. Nevertheless, as seen in the distance, there was something of impressive greatness in the idea of the very fountain from which issued the streams that irrigated the whole kingdom. Johnson was now to see the publisher in his office. The magazine was then published at St. John's Gate, one of the last relics of the venerable monastery of the heroic knights of St. John of Jerusalem, which was suppressed in 1540, and, by dilapidations and encroachments, little more than the ancient gateway remained to indicate the former grandeur of the place. Though not of an imaginative temper, and certainly not in a situation to yield himself to a fit of sentimentality, yet he confessed that when he saw that venerable pile of mediæval architecture he "beheld it with reverence." affair was not in Johnson's usual manner, and at the same time the motive to touch softly upon the weak spots in Cave's character, and thus to ingratiate himself with one whose favor could be so valuable might justify the suspicion that Johnson in this case actually stooped to act the part of a flatterer. This suspicion would also be strengthened by considering what was Cave's real character: for though he was industrious and enterprising in business, in literature he was the merest pretender, and in his manners was coarse and uncourtly, not on account of any illtemper or disregard for others, but for want of discernment, and a due sense of the proprieties of life. It is, however, sufficiently evident that Johnson entertained an honest esteem for his early friend and patron, as is evinced by the biography of Cave, which he prepared for the magazine, when a change of circumstances had taken away every motive to undue panegyrics. Johnson now became a steady contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine, and also a kind of general editor under the direction of the publisher, who esteemed his own abilities for such a task quite too highly to allow of any superior. It does not appear that Cave set any very high value on Johnson's genius, for he was incapable of appreciating it; he valued him chiefly as a useful person, who could do a A favorable impression had been made great many little things to help in getting on the mind of the shrewd publisher as to up the monthly miscellany. As an eviJohnson's ability to be useful to him, and dence of his incompetency to judge of the he evidently desired to secure his services. character of his new coadjutor, it is related This good opinion was fully reciprocated; that, determined to dazzle him with the for whatever faults or foibles may be splendor of some of his brilliant contribucharged to Cave, it is certain that he se- tors, he invited Johnson at one time to cured and retained the esteem of John- meet him at a certain coffee-house, where son to an eminent degree. This esteem he should be introduced to them. The probably was not altogether disinterested; invitation was accepted, and on calling at but there can be no doubt that, though not the appointed time and place Cave met blind, it was sincere. Cave, as the pub- him, dressed in a loose horseman's coat lisher of the Gentleman's Magazine, had and a great bushy uncombed wig, and inassumed the title of Sylvanus Urban, by troduced him to Mr. Browne, long known which name he was commonly known in as a constant but feeble correspondent of that relation. Johnson's first contribution the Gentleman's Magazine, whom he (at least of those known to have been his) found sitting at the upper end of a long was a Latin poem addressed to the pub- table enveloped in a cloud of tobaccolisher in his assumed name, congratulating smoke. Johnson was not blind to the him on his superiority over his competi- offensive traits in Cave's character; but tors, and lauding both him and his work he discovered also some real excellences, with all the license that is allowed to poets and he had the good sense, for the sake writing in Latin. of the good, to bear with and overlook the It must be acknowledged that this whole evil. No cringing was required on the one hand, as it would have been indignantly spurned on the other; but Cave had need of Johnson's service, for which he was ready to make what was deemed a fair compensation, and Johnson wanted employment and means of subsistence, which were here offered him on terms not incompatible with honor and self-respect. ST. JOHN'S GATE. An incident connected with this period of Johnson's history may be here related, as a matter of curious interest marking the early steps of the progress of one who soon after dazzled the gay world of the metropolis by the unrivaled power of his imitative genius. Johnson's intimacy at St. John's Gate drew Garrick thither also; and though Cave had no great taste for diversions, yet learning that the young friend of his coadjutor had an inclination to the stage, he expressed a wish to see him in some comic character. A room was accordingly fitted up over the great arch of the gate, where, assisted by a few journeymen printers, the future Roscius of the English stage represented, with all the graces of comic humor, the principal character in Fielding's farce of the Mock Doctor. We have here to contemplate Samuel Johnson, whose fame has become co-extensive with the literary world, and is destined to last as long as the English language, at nearly thirty years of age, bound down to a sub-editorship, toiling with unremitting diligence "for gain, not glory." He had improved his condition by his new engagement, and yet even now his situation was tolerable only as an alternative to the state of actual want for which it had been exchanged. That he was far from being satisfied with what he had attained is evident; he knew he deserved a better fate, and though the future was not prodigal of promises he could not assent to forego the hopes of better days to come. An occasional indication of what was in him was given in some of his happier or more elaborate productions, though as yet the world had seen but few indications of the transcendent powers that were maturing within him. At length, however, a production of his pen broke upon the world, that gave assurance of the man. In May, 1738, his "LONDON, a Poem in imitation of the third satire of Juvenal," was published, which at once burst forth like the blaze of a meteor. Neither the theme nor the mode of treatment possessed the advantages of novelty for "the manners of the town" are the unfailing subject of the strictures of the satirical muse; and this same satire of Juvenal had been already applied in parody or by imitation, to Paris by Boileau, and to London by Oldham. It was impossible therefore for Johnson in this case to win renown or even to escape contempt, except by excelling his co-imitators, without imitating them. The attempt was a bold one, and may be considered as another evidence that from an early period of his history he was to a good degree confident of his own powers. Of the history of the production of this poem we have no information except as to its date. The author himself inscribed upon his own corrected copy "written in 1738;" and as it was published in May of that year, and seems, from the correspondence concerning its publication, to have been completed some two months before, the time of its composition is narrowed down to the months of January and February. Nor is it difficult to suppose that with such vigor of mind as Johnson then possessed, he might, in that time, |