his name should be among those that, in spent in provision for the day that was passing over him. He was allowed by the booksellers to draw on them, as the work went on. But his clear profit, during the long years that he was thus "tugging at the oar," could not, we estimate, have amounted to much more than two pounds, or, at the most, to two pounds ten shillings a week. His wife, in her last illness, to use his own words, "passed through many months of languor, weakness, and decay." She required, or thought she required, country air and nice living. Money was needed, and money was no longer showered, as it had been in the golden days of Queen Anne, on the wise, the witty, and the learned. The Dictionary, as he told the world, had been written "amidst inconvenience and destruction, in sickness and in sor row." To the ruinous task to which for two years he bound himself, he had often, as the stated day came round, "to bring an attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease." He was a man little given to bewailing his lot. But it is words such as these that "The Rambler "ure for abstracted truth, and whom virtue uses in bidding his readers farewell. While his life at home was so sad a one, he was not brought up with the consciousness of success abroad. If he did not, as he says, feel much dejection from his "Rambler's" want of popularity, neither on the other hand was he sustained by that elation of spirits which fame gives, and which, in its turn, inspires the happy author towards still higher fame. He was, perhaps, the proudest man of his time. The proudest piece of writing of which we know is his preface to the English Dictionary. Mr. Carlyle is wrong when he writes: "To Johnson, as to a healthy-minded man, the fantastic article sold or given under the title of Fame, had little or no value but its intrinsic one. He prized it as the means of getting him employment and good wages, scarcely as anything more.' He for gets how Johnson once exclaimed to a party of his friends, with a sudden air of exultation, "Oh, gentlemen, I must tell you a very great thing. The emperor of Russia has ordered 'The Rambler' to be translated into the Russian language: so I shall be read on the banks of the Wolga." In "The Rambler " itself, he writes of "fame, which no man, however high or mean, however wise or ignorant, was yet able to despise." He had no mind that ... He had not, it is true, gone the way to win popularity. "If," he writes, "I have not been distinguished by the distributors of literary honor, I have seldom descended to the arts by which fame is obtained. I have never complied with temporary curiosity, nor enabled my readers to discuss the topic of the day. I have rarely exemplified my assertion by living characters; in my papers no man could look for censure of his enemies, or praises of himself; and they were only expected to peruse them, whose passions left them leis could please by its ended dignity." He began "The Rambler" by offering up a solemn prayer that in this undertaking God's Holy Spirit might not be withheld from him, and he ended it by the wellgrounded hope that he might be "numbered among the writers who have given ardour to virtue and confidence to truth." There were many among his readers who complained that his tone was too serious, and that among so much sober and even solemn writing there were far too few pieces lightly written. The judi cious reader of the present day would, we believe, judge differently, and would not unwillingly see many of the more familiar papers expunged. Had Johnson given free play to his humor, had he described those strange scenes through which in his poverty he had passed, and that almost endless variety of character which he had known, we should have had a work that. might perhaps have rivalled "The Spectator." But, if he could have done this at any time of his life, he certainly could not in these days of labor and sickness and sorrow. He looked upon the world as a stage, where the part that he must play was a sad one. "Every period of life," he wrote, "is obliged to borrow its happiness from the time to come. In youth we have nothing past to entertain us, and in age we derive little from retro For man thus stricken with sadness, thus "prest by the load of life," even had nature otherwise favored him to the full, it would have been impossible, as we have already said, to write with that easy playfulness which so delights us in Addison. But Johnson, if we mistake not, wantonly put shackles on himself. When his spect but hopeless sorrow. Yet the fu-in silence, yet it cannot be denied that he comes laid aside his plain garb, and showed himself in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace, and a gold-laced hat, "from the fancy that, as a dramatic author, his dress should be more gay than what he ordinarily wore." In like manner, when he came before the world as a moralist, he deliberately chose, we are convinced, a more labored style. Malone, writing in the year 1783, says that he imagines "there are three periods or epochs in his style. At first he was certainly simpler than afterwards. Between the years 1750 and 1758 his style was, I think, in its hardest and most labored state. Of late it is evidently improved." Macaulay traces this improvement to the fact that in his latter years "he had written little and had talked much." He does not recognize however this middle style, but compares the "Life of Savage," which was written in 1744, with the remaining "Lives of the Poets," which appeared five and thirty years later. In these his mannerism, he says, was less perceptible than formerly; and his diction frequently had a colloquial ease which it had formerly wanted. The improvement," he continued, "may be discerned by a skilful critic 46 • Johnson uses cant" " in two senses- either as "a whining pretension to goodness, in formal and affected terms, or-it is in this sense that he uses it here-as 'a barbarous jargon," "slang," as we should now say. 66 in the 'Journey to the Hebrides,' and in the Lives of the Poets' is so obvious that it cannot escape the notice of the most careless reader." Though in the "Lives" Johnson's style is undoubtedly at its best, yet Malone and Macaulay lay too much stress on the changes that were caused by an advance in years, or by a mere difference in the mode of living. Macaulay, in the instance that he gives, does not see, or at all events does not let his readers see, that the cause which he assigns is too small for the effect. The last page of the "Journey" was corrected late in the autumn of 1774. The "Lives" were begun in the summer of 1777. The improvement that he indicates is evidently a striking one; for that which could only be discussed at the beginning of the period by a skilful critic, cannot, he says, at the end of the period escape the notice of the most careless reader. Even if this abstinence from composition had been complete and complete it was not if the pen had been idle, and the ink in the inkstand had been dried up, could so great an advance have been made in less than three years by a man who had reached the age of sixty-five? Johnson grew in knowledge as he grew in years, but an old man's style does not make either great or rapid changes. At threescore and five we may say, as Adam said of fourscore, "It is too late a week." Both these critics leave too much out of account the subjects on which, in each case, he wrote; for with his subjects his style certainly varied. Scarcely less, perhaps, did it vary with the importance that each subject had in his own eyes. When he began the "Lives" he meant only to write "prefaces to each poet, of no more than a few pages." Such brief biographies he had frequently written in his younger days. But in writing an account of a journey to the wilds of Scotland he was appearing in a new character. The hostility which he was supposed to entertain against the Scotch was certain to lay him open to unfriendly criticism. He must put forth therefore all his strength. Moreover, he knew that from him would be expected thoughts on national manners, and reflections raised by what he had seen. For the depth of observation on life and manners, and for the elegance of narrative, says Murphy, his book was extolled. That he expected to be widely read is clear; for he complained that the work had not had a great sale, though four thousand copies, it is said, were sold in the first week. He had, therefore, from the first chosen what we may call his big style, and had put on his scarlet waistcoat and his gold-laced hat before he sat down to write. Before even he went to the Hebrides there was no want of colloquial ease in his letters. How playfully, when he was staying at Ashburne, did he write about the great bull, the pride of Dr. Taylor, the rector! "I have seen the great bull; and very great he is. I have seen likewise his heir apparent, who promises to inherit all the bulk and all the virtues of his sire. I have seen the max offered an hundred guineas for the young bull, while he was yet little better than a calf." A year later he writes: "There has been a man here to-day to take a farm. After some talk he went to see the bull, and said that he had seen a bigger. Do you think he is likely to get the farm?" Fifteen months later he has not forgotten either the great bull or the man. "Our bulls and cows are all well; but we yet hate the man that had seen a bigger bull.". How lively, too, is the passage in which, sixteen years earlier than the publication of the "Journey," he described in a letter to Langton the representation of Dodsley's "Cleone." This tragedy, that contained, he was afraid, more blood than brains, had been refused by Garrick, and had been brought out at the rival house. "The two Wartons," he writes, "just looked into the town, and were taken to see' Cleone,' where, David [Garrick] says, they were starved for want of company to keep them warm. David and Doddy [Dodsley] have had a new quarrel, and, think, cannot conveniently quarrel any more. 'Cleone' was well acted by all its characters, but Bellamy left nothing to be desired. I went the first night, and supported it as well as I might; for Doddy, you know, is my patron, and I would not desert him. The play was very well received. Doddy, after the danger was over, went every night to the stage-side and cried at the distress of poor Cleone." It is not merely in letters that he showed a lighter style. Throughout it will, as a general rule, be found that in narrative his language is simpler and his sentences are less involved; but that, when he becomes didactic, then his words grow bigger and his sentences become more labored. It is beyond all doubt that in the "Lives of the Poets" his style is at its best. It had certainly improved during the many years in which his pen had lain well-nigh idle. Yet we are equally certain that had he written "The Ram bler" when he was on the threshold of threescore and ten, his diction would have had but little of that colloquial ease which | Macaulay praises in the "Lives;" and had he written the "Lives" in his middle period, they would have been very far from showing all that mannerism which the same critic assigns to his constant habit of elaborate composition. Let any one compare his "Life of Sir Francis Drake" and his "Parliamentary Debates," which were written at the same period of his life, and he will see at once that even in his early manhood he was the master of two widely different styles. Though to the reader of our time the perusal of "The Rambler" would seem a heavy task, yet should he go through with it, he will find that it grows lighter the further he advances, and that the mannerism becomes less displeasing the more he is accustomed to it. Even though the style is on the whole bad, he will have some pleasure in tracing wherein it is that lies the really admirable perfection of a bad style. Moreover, he will be rewarded by coming upon sentences as striking in their vigor of expression as they are powerful in thought; while on many a page will he find that "homely wisdom "with which Johnson was more amply endowed, as Macaulay writes, "than any writer since the time of Swift." We are sometimes startled by what he says, but the shock that he gives us soon loses itself in meditations upon the truthfulness or falsity of what he asserts. Thus, after describing the peculiarities which different occupations give to the mind or the body, he writes: "These peculiarities have been of great use in the general hostility which every part of mankind exercises against the rest to furnish insults and sarcasms.". In another paper he enlarges on this dreadful hostility. "We are," he says, "by our occupations, education, and habits of life, divided almost into different species, which regard one another, for the most part, with scorn and malignity. Each of these classes of the human race has desires, fears, and conversation, vexations and merriment, peculiar to itself; cares which another cannot feel; pleasures which he cannot partake; and modes of expressing every sensation which he cannot understand." It is not Swift, but Johnson, who thus writes. Is this all, we sorrowfully ask, that the great Christian moralist can say for the world, after it had for so many an age been professing to follow the teaching of One who was to bring peace on earth and good-will towards men? Johnson was least of all men a cynic. Few men felt so deeply as he did for his fellows. He felt for them singly, and he felt for them as a whole. He loved the poor, says Mrs. Piozzi, as she had never yet seen any one else do. "He would in the days of his poverty, as he returned to his lodgings late at night, put pennies into the hands of the children whom he saw asleep on thresholds and stalls, that they might have wherewith to buy a breakfast." But his tenderness was not limited in its range. It went beyond this man and that, and took in classes and nations. In "The Rambler " he writes of "the great republic of humanity," ," "the universal league of social beings,' We seem to catch a faroff sound of Mr. Tennyson's famous line, "" "It is not easy," he says in one fine passage, "to commit more atrocious treason against the great republic of humanity, than by falsifying its records and misguiding its decrees." In another equally fine passage, he likens those who would corrupt the innocence of youth to shipwreckers, who "ought to be destroyed by a general insurrection of all social beings." As a set-off against the stern and harsh judgment which he in "The Rainbler" passed on mankind, we have the statement that he made nearly thirty years later, when he owned that "from experi ence he had found mankind more disposed to cheat than he had any notion of; but more disposed to do one another good than he had conceived." With what rigor does he write against that dull morality which would reduce curiosity to a vice, and a petty vice too! Curiosity, he says, is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vig orous intellect. It is the thirst of the soul. In a vision he recognizes her as his longlived protectress, and he sees her ac knowledged by truth as among the most faithful of her followers. She multiplies the inlets to happiness, and in great and generous minds she is the first passion and the last. Again, how much does he go against the common notion when he maintains that in youth "diffidence is found the inseparable associate of understanding; " and when he asserts that a young man who is always suspicious of the motives of others, and who believes that no one has any real tenderness but for himself, is "a wretch incapable of generosity or benevolence; a villain early | the rich man, who was intending to return completed beyond the need of common to the town which he had left as a poor opportunities and gradual temptations." It would be easy to string together a long line of sentences, each of which might well form the subject of an essay. Who can forbear to pause and think when he comes across truths such as these? "The rich and the powerful live in a perpetual masquerade, in which all about them wear borrowed characters." "A man guilty of poverty easily believes himself suspected." "Cowardice encroaches fast upon such as spend their lives in the company of persons higher than themselves." "It is dangerous for mean minds to venture themselves within the sphere of greatness." Though greatness has sometimes sheltered guilt, it can afford no protection to ignorance or dulness." "The lady maintains the dignity of her own performances with all the firmness of stupidity accustomed to be flattered." "Most men are unwilling to be taught." "Love of life is necessary to a vigorous prosecution of any undertaking." It is happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust." "There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge." "Unnecessarily to obtrude unpleasing ideas is a species of oppression." "We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass." "Men may be generally observed to grow less tender as they advance in age." "No man hates him at whom he can laugh." "The future is purchased by the present." With what force does he check idle longings after fame! "The utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle and be forgotten." Even though we have great merit, yet our merit " may pass without notice, huddled in the variety of things, and thrown into the general miscellany of life." For renown there is not, and there cannot be, room enough. Fame crowds out fame. "Names which hoped to range over kingdoms and continents, shrink at last into cloisters or colleges." He never learnt, as he tells us Pope soon did, "the cant of an author." He was too much of a critic himself "to treat critics with contempt." Yet with what fierce anger does he fall on those "who make it their amusement to hinder the reception of every work of learning or genius; men who stand as sentinels in the avenues of fame, and value themselves upon giving ignorance and envy the first notice of a prey"! With what humor does he hit off lad, there to enjoy all the triumph of his success! "The acclamations of the populace I purposed to reward with six hogsheads of ale and a roasted ox, and then recommend them to return to their work." How patronizing benevolence is here hit off at a stroke! When he tells us that he is "sometimes inclined to imagine that, casual calamities excepted, there might, by universal prudence, be procured a universal exemption from want," we see, as it were, the speculations of Malthus, and of the modern school of economists and poor-law reformers opening out before us. In that admirable "Rambler," entitled, "The Necessity of Proportioning Punishments to Crimes," he traced the path which Bentham and Romilly, and a host of other philanthropists, have since trodden into a highway of mercy and justice. He describes those dreadful days, "when the prisons of this city are emptied into the grave; " when people "crowd in thousands to the legal massacre, and look with carelessness, perhaps with triumph, on the utmost exacerbations of human misery." He shows how, as new kinds of fraud arise, the attempt is at once made in each case to suppress it with death; while the thieves, again in their turn, strike out new methods of roguery. "The law then renews the pursuit in the heat of anger, and overtakes the offender again with death." Thus for great and petty crimes alike there is at length but one punishment, and that the most terrible of all. Yet "all but murderers have, at their last hour, the common sensations of mankind pieading in their favor. They who would rejoice at the correction of a thief, are yet shocked at the thought of destroying him. His crime shrinks to nothing compared with his misery; and severity defeats itself by exciting pity.' ... The pious, the tender, and the just will always scruple to concur with the community in an act which their private judgment cannot approve. Rigorous laws produce total impunity. All laws against wickedness are ineffectual unless some will inform, and some will prosecute; but till we mitigate the penalties for mere violations of property, information will always be hated, and prosecu tion dreaded." "I believe," he continues, "every thief will confess that he has been more than once seized and dismissed. . . . Multitudes will be suffered to advance from |