study and improvement of our language. The plan which our author adopted has been considered unexceptionable; and had he not too implicitly copied the English portion of the Lexicon of Ainsworth, his vocabulary would have been much more copious and complete. As it is, it has been an invaluable gift to his country; and he who shall succeed in approximating nearer to perfection, though he may justly claim the reward of industry, and, perhaps, of more recondite learning, must, if he be candid and grateful, ever refer to the Dictionary of Johnson as the original, the basis of the fabric to which he shall owe his reputation.

The labours of Johnson, notwithstanding he had now produced the Rambler and his Dictionary, were not only insufficient to procure the blessings of competence, but were, in fact, not able to screen him from the pressure of absolute poverty. The year which succeeded the publication of his Lexicon saw him under an arrest for the paltry sum of five pounds eighteen shillings. In this dilemma he applied, by letter, to Richardson the Novellist, who immediately sent him six guineas. To add to his distress, relaxation from mental exertion, which now became absolutely necessary, in order to relieve his powers, wearied by the tension of long and severe employment,

brought with it, in his morbid habit, the customary accompaniment of melancholy and dejection. It was in a frame of mind similar to this that he produced his pathetic effusion in Latin hexameters, entituled,

ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ,

Post Lexicon Anglicanum auctum et emendatum; in which he has given a representation so minutely accurate of his own feelings and failings, that probably no one of his numerous biographers, however free from bias, has touched the prominent features of his character with such fidelity, with such a perfect subserviency to truth and impar tiality. After mentioning the labours of Scaliger in the composition of his Lexicon, and after extolling his genius and imagination, as exhibited in his various productions, he thus alludes to himself; a passage which I shall give from the spirited version of Mr. Murphy:

For me, though his example strike my view,
Oh! not for me his footsteps to pursue.
Whether first Nature, unpropitious, cold,
This clay compounded in a ruder mould;
Or the slow current, loit'ring at my heart,
No gleam of wit or fancy can impart ;
Whate'er the cause, from me no numbers flow,
No visions warm me, and no raptures glow.
A mind like Scaliger's, superior still,
No grief could conquer, no misfortune chill.

Though for the maze of words his native skies
He seem'd to quit, 'twas but again to rise;
To mount once more to the bright source of day,
And view the wonders of th' ætherial way.
The love of fame his gen'rous bosom fir'd;
Each Science hail'd him, and each Muse inspir'd.
For him the Sons of Learning trimm'd the bays,
And nations grew harmonious in his praise,

My task perform'd, and all my labours o'er,
For me what lot bas Fortune now in store?
The listless will succeeds, that worst disease,
The rack of indolence, the sluggish ease.
Care grows on care, and o'er my aching brain
Black Melancholy pours her morbid train.
No kind relief, no lenitive at hand,

I seck, at midnight clubs, the social band;

But midnight clubs, where wit with noise conspires,
Where Comus revels, and where wine inspires,
Delight no more: I seek my lonely bed,
And call on Sleep to soothe my languid head:
But sleep from these sad lids flies far away;
I mourn all night, and dread the coming day.
Exhausted, tir'd, I throw my eyes around,
To find some vacant spot on classic ground;
And soon, vain hope! I form a grand design;
Languor succeeds, and all my pow'rs decline.
If Science open not her richest vein,
Without materials all our toil is vain.
A form to rugged stone when Phidias gives,
Beneath his touch a new creation lives.
Remove his marble, and his genius dies;
With nature then no breathing statue vies.

Whate'er I plan, I feel my pow'rs confin'd
By Fortune's frown and penury of mind.
I boast no knowledge glean'd with toil and strife,
That bright reward of a well-acted life.

I view myself, while Reason's feeble light
Shoots a pale glimmer through the gloom of night,
While passions, error, phantoms of the brain, 1
And vain opinions, fill the dark domain;

A dreary void, where fears with grief combin'd
Waste all within, and desolate the mind.

It was impossible, therefore, for Johnson long to continue idle, unmenaced by the apprehension, which for ever haunted his mind, of approaching insanity. It was essentially necessary to the preservation of his faculties that he should have intellectual employment; and accordingly, if not engaged in any extensive and elaborate design, he was ever ready to favour his friends with Prefaces and Introductions to their respective works, or willing to assist in the construction of Magazines, Reviews, and other periodical publications. Soon after he had printed his Dictionary he wrote, for Zachariah Williams, the father of the blind lady whom he had so kindly taken into his house, An Account of an attempt to ascertain the Longitude at Sea, by an exact Theory of the Variations of the Magnetical Needle; with a Table of the Variations at the most remarkable Cities in Europe, from the year 1660 to 1860; and as a proof of the versa

tility of his talents, it may not be irrelevant to mention, that in the year following he contributed a Preliminary Address to the Literary Magazine, or Universal Review; a Dedication and Preface to Payne's Introduction to the Game of Draughts; and an Introduction to the London Chronicle, an evening newspaper!

In the year 1756, also, he published an Abridgement of his Dictionary, in two vols. 8vo; several Essays in the Universal Visitor, or Monthly Memorialist; six Original Essays in the Literary Magazine; and many Reviews. It was in this year, likewise, that he issued his Proposals for an edition of Shakspeare, an undertaking of which we shall have occasion to say more hereafter.

By the sums arising from these miscellaneous contributions, from the subscriptions for his Shakspeare, and from the circulation of his Idler, in 1758, our author contrived to live. He might indeed, had he chosen to enter the church, have been placed in a state of comparative opulence; for the father of his beloved friend Bennet Langton offered, in 1757, to present him, if he would take orders, to a rectory, in his gift, of considerable value. This mode of provision, however, he declined from conscientious motives. “I have not," said he, "the requisites for the office, and I cannot, in my conscience, shear that flock which I am