"in which he was employed on his tragedy of Sir Thomas Overbury, he was without lodging, and often without meat; nor had he' any other conveniences for study than the fields or the streets allowed him; there he used to walk and form his speeches, and afterwards step into a shop, beg for a few moments the use of the pen and ink, and write down what he had composed, upon paper which he had picked up by accident;" but even when his pieces were written under very dissimilar circumstances, at a period when prospects of affluence and ease surrounded him, they are far from being entitled to the epithets which his critic has lavished upon them. "His works," he exclaims, " are the productions of a genius truly poetical-his descriptions are striking, his images animated, his fictions justly imagined, and his allegories artfully pursued; his diction is elevated, though sometimes forced, and his numbers sonorous and majestic."

From this description, who could suppose that the general character of the poetry of Savage is mediocrity! such, however, is the case; for even The Wanderer, one of the best of his productions, and composed under the most auspicious situation of his affairs, though it displays a few vigorous and splendid lines, is, upon the whole, flat, perplexed, and uninteresting. The encomia

of Johnson have, for a time, given Savage. a place in the collections of our national poetry; but the lapse of a few years will strip him of a rank which he has obtained from aid altogether extrinsic, and he will descend to mingle with the croud who, from adventitious circumstances, have attained a temporary elevation, and have then fallen to rise no more. Savage will be known to posterity only by the Life of Johnson,

The reputation which our author justly obtained by the biography of this eccentric character,* induced him at subsequent periods of his life, and previous to his great work on the poets, to present the public with several other valuable productions in this class of literature. In 1751, appeared his Life of Cheynel, printed in "The Student," a periodical paper published at Oxford.

* It does not appear that Johnson reaped much immediate profit from his Life of Savage; for Mr. Walter Harte, author of the Life of Gustavus Adolphus, has recorded, that "soon after Savage's Life was published, he dined with Edward Cave, and occasionally praised it. Soon after, meeting him, Cave said, 'You made a man very happy t'other day.'' How could that be?' replied Harte; nobody was there but ourselves.' Cave answered, by reminding him that a plate of victuals was sent behind a screen, which was to Johnson, dressed so shabbily, that he did not choose to appear; but on hearing the conversation, was highly delighted with the encomiums on his book." Boswell, vol. 1, p. 136.

In 1754, he contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine The Life of Cave, the founder of that useful miscellany, and his earliest patron; and though the even tenor of the days of this industrious printer presented little that was likely to arrest or gratify curiosity, he has contrived to render it a pleasing and instructive narrative.

A more elaborate effort in biography issued from his pen in 1756, "The Life of Sir Thomas Browne," prefixed to a new edition of his "Christian Morals." To the works of this learned physician, Johnson was peculiarly partial; and it is well known, that for many of the ponderous words which are scattered through the pages of the Rambler, he was indebted to the study of the Religio Medici and the Pseudo-doxia Epidemica. It was to be expected therefore, that the subject would be treated by him with more than common attention; it is, indeed, written con amore, and ranks among the best of his biographical attempts.

The same year he likewise produced in the Literary Magazine, or Universal Review, The Life of Frederick III. King of Prussia, 66 a model," says Mr. Murphy, "of the biographical style." The narrative, which, in point of language and arrangement, is remarkably clear and perspicuous, terminates with the close of the

year 1745, and exhibits our author's political and diplomatic talents in a very favourable point of view. There is a reflection, however, in this life which ought not to have fallen from the pen of Johnson, and which, as it is perfectly unqualified, is an unjustifiable satire on literature and its professors. Expatiating on the auspicious manner in which the young king commenced his reign, he relates, that "he still continued that correspondence with learned men which he began when he was a prince; and the eyes of all scholars, a race of mortals formed for dependence, were upon him." An independent spirit was one of Johnson's own characteristics; and he might have recollected, that not only many of the first persons in the republic of letters have been remarkable for energy of mind and freedom of spirit ; but that literature and science, when properly pursued, have in themselves a strong tendency to emancipate their cultivators from the slavery of adulation, and the baseness of sycophantic sub

mission.

After a long pause in his biographical labours, our author wrote, in 1763, The Life of Roger Ascham, for the purpose of being prefixed to a quarto edition of that writer's English Works, undertaken by the Reverend Mr. Bennet. The philological learning of Ascham, and particularly

his skill in English composition during the reign. of Henry VIII. justly entitled him to the gratitude and attention of his country; it was one of his principal objects "to give an example of diction more natural and more truly English, than was used by the common writers of that age, whom he censures for mingling exotic terms with their native language ;" and, in this he has, for the most part, happily succeeded. The life of this valuable scholar is written with Johnson's usual vigour and richness of style, and, though short, contains much just sentiment, and many interesting remarks. The following paragraph, for

instance, on Ascham's admission into the university in 1530, delineates in a brief, but very striking manner, the peculiar state of learning at that important æra. "Ascham entered Cambridge," he remarks, 66 at a time when the last great revolution of the intellectual world was filling every academical mind with ardour or anxiety. The destruction of the Constantinopolitan empire had driven the Greeks, with their language, into the interior parts of Europe, the art of printing had made the books easily attainable, and Greek now began to be taught in England. The doctrines of Luther had already filled all the nations of the Romish communion with controversy and dissen

tion.

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