Johnson's literary fame is, in our judgment, as secure as his character. Like the stone which he placed over his father's grave at Lichfield, and which, it is shameful to think, has been removed, it is "too massy and strong "" to be ever much affected by the wind and weather of our literary atmosphere. "Never," so he wrote to Mrs. Thrale, "let criticisms operate upon your face or your mind; it is very rarely that an author is hurt by his critics. The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out; but it often dies in the socket. From the author of Fitzosborne's Letters I cannot think myself in much danger. I met him only once, about thirty years ago, and in some small dispute soon reduced him to whistle." Dr. Johnson is in no danger from anybody. None but Gargantua could blow him out, and he still burns brightly in his socket.

How long this may continue who can say? It is a far cry to 1985. Science may by that time have squeezed out literature, and the author of the Lives of the Poets may be dimly remembered as an odd fellow who lived in the Dark Ages, and had a very creditable fancy for making chemical experiments. On the other hand, the Spiritualists may be in possession, in which case the Cock Lane Ghost will occupy more of public attention than Boswell's hero, who will, perhaps, be reprobated as the profane utterer of these idle words: " Suppose I know a man to be so lame that he is absolutely incapable to move himself, and I find him in a different room from that in which I left him, shall I puzzle myself with idle conjectures, that perhaps his nerves have by some unknown change all at

once become effective? No, sir, it is clear how he got into a different room-he was carried."

We here part company with Johnson, bidding him a most affectionate farewell, and leaving him in undisturbed possession of both place and power. His character will bear investigation and some of his books perusal. The latter, indeed, may be submitted to his own test, and there is no truer one. A book, he wrote, should help us either to enjoy life or to endure it. His frequently do both.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DR. JOHNSON

D

1894

R. JOHNSON'S massive shade cannot complain of this generation. We are not

all of us-or, indeed, many of us-much after his mind, but, for all that, we worship his memory. Editions of Boswell, old or new, are on every shelf; but more than this, there is a healthy and commendable disposition to recognise that great, surpassingly great, as are the merits of Boswell, still there is such a thing as a detached and separate Johnson.

It is a good thing every now and again to get rid of Boswell. It is a little ungrateful, but we have Johnson's authority for the statement that we hate our benefactors. After all, even had there been no Boswell, there would have been a Johnson. I will always stick to it that Hawkins's Life is a most readable book. Dr. Birkbeck Hill stands a good chance of being hated some day. We owed him a debt of gratitude already. He has lately added to it by publishing at the Clarendon Press, in two stately volumes, uniform with his great edition of the Life, the Letters of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

For a lazy man who loathed writing Dr. Johnson did not do badly-his letters to Mrs. Thrale exceed three hundred. 'It is not known that he ever wrote a letter to Burke. I cannot quite jump with the

humour of Dr. Hill's comment on this fact. He observes: "So far as we know, he did not write a single letter to Edmund Burke-he wrote more than three hundred to the wife of a Southwark brewer." What has the beer got to do with it? and why drag in Southwark? Every man knows, without being told, why Johnson wrote three hundred letters to Mrs. Thrale; and as for his not writing to Burke, it is notorious that the Doctor never could be got to write to anybody for information.

Dr. Hill's two volumes are as delightful books as ever issued from the press. In them Dr. Johnson is to be seen in every aspect of his character, whilst a complete study may be made from them of the enormous versatility of his style. It is hard to say what one admires most-the ardour of his affection, the piety of his nature, the friendliness of his disposition, the playfulness of his humour, or his love of learning and of letters.

What strikes one perhaps most, if you assume a merely critical attitude, is the glorious ease and aptitude of his quotations from ancient and modern writings. Of pedantry there is not a trace. Nothing is forced or dragged in. It is all, apparently, simply inevitable. You do not exclaim as you read, "What a memory the fellow has!" but merely, "How charming it all is!"

It is not difficult to construct from these two volumes alone the gospel-the familiar, the noble gospel according to Dr. Johnson. It reads somewhat as follows:

Your father begot you and your mother bore you. Honour them both. Husbands, be faithful to your wives. Wives,

forgive your husbands' unfaithfulness-once. No grown man who is dependent on the will, that is the whim, of another can be happy, and life without enjoyment is intolerable gloom. Therefore, as money means independence and enjoyment, get money, and having got it keep it. A spendthrift is a fool. Clear your mind of cant and never debauch your understanding. The only liberty worth turning out into the street for, is the liberty to do what you like in your own house and to say what you like in your own inn. All work is bondage. Never get excited about causes you do not understand, or about people you have never seen. Keep Corsica out of your head.

Life is a struggle with either poverty or ennui; but it is better to be rich than to be poor. Death is a terrible thing to face. The man who says he is not afraid of it lies. Yet, as murderers have met it bravely on the scaffold, when the time comes so perhaps may I. In the meantime I am horribly afraid. The future is dark. I should like more evidence of the immortality of the soul.

There is great solace in talk. We-you and I—are shipwrecked on a wave-swept rock. At any moment one or other of us, perhaps both, may be carried out to sea and lost. For the time being we have a modicum of light and warmth, of meat and drink. Let us constitute ourselves a club, stretch out our legs and talk. We have minds, memories, varied experiences, different opinions. Sir, let us talk, not as men who mock at fate, not with coarse speech or foul tongue, but with a manly mixture of the gloom that admits the inevitable, and the merriment that observes the incongruous. talking we shall learn to love one another, not sentimentally but fundamentally.

Thus

Care

Cultivate your mind, if you happen to have one. greatly for books and literature. Venerate poor scholars, but don't shout for "Wilkes and Liberty!" The one is a whoremonger, the other a flatulency.

If any tyrant prevents your goings out and your comings in, fill your pockets with large stones and kill him as he passes. Then go home and think no more about it. Never theorise about Revolution. Finally, pay your score at your club and your final debt to Nature generously and without casting the account too narrowly. Don't be a prig like Sir John Hawkins, or your own enemy like Bozzy, or a Whig like Burke, or a vile wretch like Rousseau, or pretend to be an atheist like Hume, but be a good fellow, and don't insist upon being remembered more than a month after you are dead.

This is but the First Lesson. To compose the Second would be a more difficult task and must