"What tears the river shed, When the sad pomp along his banks was led;" which rather inclines us to the belief that in this, as in many other instances, the poetic reading is not the true one

"The muses oft in lands of vision play;" but the fact that he died at Chertsey, as much respected as a man as he was admired as a poet, is certain, and his house is often visited by strangers, who are per

kindness of its proprietor, who honors the spot so hallowed by memories of "the melancholy Cowley"-he who considered and described "business" as

The career of Abraham Cowley was never sullied by vice; he was loyal without being servile, and at once modest, independent, and sincere. His character is eloquently drawn by Dr. Spratt: "Hemitted to see his favorite haunts by the governed his passions with great moderation; his virtues were never troublesome or uneasy to any; whatever he disliked in others he corrected by the silent reproof of a better practice." He died at Chertsey on the 28th of July, 1667, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. A throng of nobles followed him to his grave; and the worthless king who had deserted him is reported to have said, that Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind him in England. It is said the body of Cowley was removed from Chertsey by water, thus making the Thames he loved so well the highway to his grave. There is something highly poetic in this idea of a

"The contradiction to his fate." But we must postpone our farther rambles for the present.

Chertsey loses half its romantic interest by the intrusion of the progressive agents of our time-our noisy time, of which the spirit willingly brooks no souvenirs of monastic repose. The old quaint, quiet town has now its railroad, and the shades of its heroes have departed.

AT

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL. D.

T five-and-thirty Samuel Johnson was an obscure "man of letters," occupying a subordinate position in a not very celebrated publishing establishment in London. As yet he had sent forth but a single acknowledged production (his "London") that was calculated to awaken any very large expectations in the minds of the most generous friends of literature; and though that was a work of real merit, yet it was not sufficient to win a reputation for its author in the great republic of letters. Had he died at that age his cotemporaries would have forgotten him, and posterity would never have known that he had lived. His social and domestic affairs corresponded with his obscurity as a writer. The profession of authorship, in the absence of established literary eminence, is necessarily a beggarly and slavish business.

THE DAWNING OF GREATNESS.

Very few writers can produce an amount of matter which, at the best rates of payment that can be made for anonymous productions, will afford a decent subsistence; and though, as in the case of Johnson's contributions to the Gentleman's Magazine, in a few rare cases pearls are found among the mass of rubbish thus produced, such occurrences are too rare to justify any mercantile dependence on them. The quarrel between authors and publishers is an old one, and one in which one party has had nearly all to say; but it is sufficiently evident that the merits of the case are not all on one side. No man becomes an author except at his own instance, and surely the public is under no obligation to receive and treat any one as a genius till he has shown himself to be such; indeed, no man should ever make authorship his business till he has fully demonstrated his ability to attain to eminence and gain a livelihood in the profession.

At the time now under consideration there can be no doubt Johnson was miser

JOHNSON'S RESIDENCE, GOUGH-SQUARE.

ably poor. A deep, dark silence rests upon his domestic history for a period of more than ten years after his coming to London, of which only incidental and sometimes accidental glances are obtained from his more public history. Of this kind is the information gathered from the very imperfect accounts of his connections with Savage, during the years 1738-39. It would seem that for a short period an intimacy existed between Johnson and Savage, which it is suspected was a source of real disadvantage to the former, as it certainly was an occasion of discredit. Of these times Johnson himself declares, that, driven by necessity, as well as induced by Savage's custom of waking by night and sleeping by day, the two often passed the whole night wandering about St. James's Park, unable alike to procure either lodging or refreshments. A further question is suggested by this affair: Johnson had then a wife residing in London; why then was he found wandering all night in the streets for want of a restingplace? Two solutions of this mystery

baseness and profligacy. And, what is especially remarkable, this valuable production was one of the most hastily written of all its author's works. The dread of being anticipated by some other, who, he feared, “would supply from invention the want of intelligence, and under the title of The Life of Savage,' publish only a novel, filled with romantic adventures and imaginary amours," impelled him to dispatch the work in the least time possible. He states himself that he wrote forty-eight of the printed octavo pages at a single sitting a statement that is rendered credible only by his unimpeachable veracity.

imperial dignity, and the whole work studded with gems of thought and coruscations of genius, could not fail to attract notice, and to impress the public mind with a conviction of the ability of the hitherto almost unknown author. The task undertaken was a difficult one, as the author occupied the almost incompatible relations of friend and apologist of Savage, and the friend of virtue and teacher of morality. The history of Savage, as related to Johnson by himself, is rapidly yet clearly detailed; his genius is exhibited to the best advantage, and his writings noticed with the partiality of a friend, without the blindness of a flatterer. Though always kindly affected toward the unhappy subject of his narrative, he neither conceals nor palliates his faults; and while generally taking part with the mad poet against his enemies, a spirit of fairness toward them distinguishes all his discussions. If the work contains errors in matters of fact, the fault was not Johnson's but Savage's, from whom John-lence in his "illustrious friend"-or, if a son received them; or if he erred at all in regard to them, it was in placing too much confidence in Savage's version of his own story.

The work, however, is chiefly remarkable for its incidental remarks and observations of an ethical and philosophical kind. | In writing the life of Savage, the author could not present the example of the life and manners of his subject for emulation, nor was it consistent with his purposes of personal friendship to exhibit him upon the gibbet as an example of the fearful consequences of crime. His faults are confessed, frankly yet kindly, and in connection with whatever mitigating circumstances the truth demanded should be considered. In the character of the subject is clearly seen the distinction between a virtuous man and a friend of virtue; and the case is made very evident, that while the author may be arrayed on the side of truth and right, the man may be of the opposite extreme. Like a well-executed picture of an unpleasant object, the sketch here presented gives pleasure as a work of art, though the original could excite only disgust; and though it was designed as a tribute of friendship to the memory of the departed, yet his real character is still seen through the vail of eloquence, and among the aggregation of extenuatory statements and profound moral and philosophical maxims, in its true colorings of

In this biography, so replete with brief but pungent moral reflections, Johnson very plainly intimates his low estimate of the moral character of players, and of the morals of the stage. For this he has been very harshly and unfairly treated by his biographers and critics. Even Boswell, who usually can find nothing but excel

seeming fault is confessed, it is so construed as to seem rather a virtue in disguise-can find no better explanation of his "prejudice" in this matter than the imperfection of his eyesight-assuming that because he was unable to enjoy their performances as well as others he must attack the moral character of the players; or, worse still, his views in this case are charged to his envy at the success of Garrick, though, at this time, that success was mostly prospective. That his practice in this respect, as well as in many others, was inconsistent with his teachings, is granted; for while he thus faithfully portrayed the iniquity then, as always, so prevalent about the theater, he was himself, and he continued to be, a frequenter of the play-house and an associate of stage-players. There is often a sad discrepancy between the didactics of the moralist and the practices of the man; and with Johnson, in whom the love of truth was almost a passion, while his practical morality was far from being Puritanical, this discrepancy is especially manifest. But as no one would think of judging the ethics of the Rambler by the manners of its author, so his strictures on the morals of the stage are to be estimated according to their intrinsic worth, and not by any extrinsic standard or circumstances. If, as his censors pretend, Johnson was no better than those whom he so forcibly condemned, his stric

tures show that he was what he describes Savage as having been-" not a good man, but the friend of virtue." The justice of his censures of the stage has unhappily been too abundantly and forcibly attested by the experience of a hundred years to leave the matter in doubt with any who sincerely desire to know the truth respecting it. In the very nature of the case, this state of things is made unavoidable. The patrons of the theater are, and ever will be, the less scrupulous portion of society; and since, as Johnson himself so happily expresses it

to me, and I beat him; but it was not in his shop, it was in my own chamber."

The same year he published a pamphlet entitled, "Miscellaneous observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth," &c.; to which he affixed proposals for a new edition of Shakspeare. What amount of attention he at this time devoted to the great poet by way of preparing his proposed edition, is quite uncertain. The proposals, however, did not excite as much interest as he had expected, owing, no doubt, to the fact, that the public was aware that Warburton was at that time engaged in the same work. His pamphlet, however, fell "The drama's laws the drama's patrons give; into Warburton's hands, and was honored by For we that live to please, must please to live"him as the only production on the subject the manners of the drama must be adapted not "absolutely below a serious notice," to their tastes; and as whatever is corrupt while its author was spoken of as evidentis also corrupting, the tendency of theat-ly "a man of parts and genius." His rical morals must always be from bad to project was abandoned for the present, but

worse.

In 1745, among other literary labors, he wrote the preface to the Harleian Miscellany. This famous collection consisted of eight large volumes of old but valuable pamphlets, selected out of a large amount of miscellaneous and fugitive matter, found in the library of the Earl of Oxford, when it fell into the possession of Osborne, the bookseller. The miscellany was not merely a reprint, it also contained a descriptive catalogue of the whole library; the preparation of which required a great amount of physical as well as intellectual labor. In this painful drudgery Johnson toiled through many a weary day, and as the value of the work performed by him could not be estimated as a whole or in detail, he received for it a stipulated sum per day. What Wilcox, the bookseller, had suggested to him as an appropriate business, when he first came to London, seemed now to be realized. He had become a daylaborer, and might have literally used " porter's knot" without any impropriety. The degradation of his condition was felt by both himself and his employer. When Johnson paused to look into some volume that excited his curiosity, Osborne urged him to greater diligence, whereupon Johnson, no longer able to check his anger, seizing a folio, laid the insolent bookseller among the rubbish on the floor of his shop. This is the story as usually told; but another version is given by better authority. Boswell spoke of the affair to Johnson, when he replied, "Sir, he was impertinent VOL. II, No. 3.—Q

a

Johnson ever retained a grateful recollection of the manner of Warburton's allusion to him: "He praised me," he would say, "at a time when praise was of value to me."

For the rest of this year, and the next two, he gave but little to the public. It is probable that during the earlier portion of this time he was occupied with the proposed edition of Shakspeare,-a work which, though deferred for a season, was not finally abandoned. This was the period of the last great political agitation in England as to the succession of the

crown.

That Johnson strongly sympathized with the exiled Stuarts is well known, nor is it improbable that the state of public affairs had some influence upon the action of his pen. It is said that none of his letters written during this period survived him; it is probable that he wrote very few, but with commendable discretion kept his own counsels in these troublous times. His great philological work was also, no doubt, already occupying his thoughts and dividing his labors.

Several inconsiderable poetical pieces, published in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1747, and distinguished by three asterisks, have generally been ascribed to the pen of Johnson, and are still to be found in his collected works. The authority for attributing them to Johnson is quite unsatisfactory, while the internal evidence is all against it. These pieces are, "An Epitaph on Sir Thomas Hanmer ;""To Miss on giving the author a purse of her own