narratives, as in any of his more early performances; and his style, if not so energetic, is at least more smoothed down to the taste of the generality of readers. The Lives of the English Poets' formed a memorable era in Johnson's life. It is a work which has contributed to immortalize his name, and has secured that rational esteem, which party or partiality could not procure, and which even the injudicious zeal of his friends has not been able to lessen.

In 1781 he lost his valuable friend Thrale, who appointed him executor with a legacy of £200. "I felt," he said, "almost the last flutter of his pulse, and looked for the last time upon that face, that for fifteen years had never been turned upon me, but with respect and benignity." Of his departed friend he has given a true character in a Latin epitaph to be seen in the church-yard of Streatham.

The history of Dr. Johnson from this period is a melancholy detail of affliction and sorrow. He began to feel the unavoidable calamities of old age. He who lives long must often feel the bitter pangs of separation. His intimate friends, Goldsmith, Beauclerk, Garrick, Dr. Levet and others, were now no more; and these painful events were a severe trial. Numberless excursions were taken to calm his anxiety, and sooth his apprehensions of the terrors of death, by flying as it were from himself. In the beginning of 1784, he was seized with a spasmodic asthma, which was soon accompanied with some degree of dropsy. From the latter of these complaints,

however, he was greatly relieved by a course of medicine.

Having expressed a desire of going to Italy for the recovery of his health, and his friends not deeming his pension adequate to the support of the expenses incidental to the journey; application was made to the minister, by Mr. Boswell and Sir Joshua Reynolds, unknown to Johnson, through Lord Chan cellor Thurlow, for an augmentation of it by £200. The application for it was unsuccessful; but the Lord Chancellor offered to let him have £500 out of his own purse, under the appellation of a loan, but with the intention of conferring it as a present. It is also recorded to the honour of Dr. Brocklesby, that he offered to contribute £100 per annum, during his residence abroad; but Johnson declined the offer with becoming gratitude; indeed he was now approaching fast to a state in which money could be of no avail.

During his illness he experienced the steady and kind attachment of his numerous friends. Dr. Heberden, Dr. Brocklesby, Dr. Warren, and Mr. Cruikshank, generously attended him without accepting any fees; but his constitution was decayed beyond the restorative powers of the medical art. Previous to his dissolution he burned indiscrimi nately large masses of paper, and amongst the rest two quarto volumes, containing a full and most particular account of his own life, the loss of which is much to be regretted. He expired on the 13th of December, 1784, in the seventy-fifth year of his age, and was buried on the 20th in Westminster Abbey,

near the foot of Shakspeare's monument, and close to the coffin of his friend Garrick. Agreeably to his own request, a large blue flag-stone was placed over his grave, with this inscription.

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL. D.

OBIT XIII. DIE DECEMBRIS,

ANNO DOMINI

M, DC C, LXXXV,

ÆETATIS SUE LXXV.

The monument erected to his memory in 1795, in St. Paul's Cathedral, cost 1100 guineas. It consists of a colossal figure leaning against a column. The epitaph, which is in Latin, was written by the Rev. Dr. Parr.

Having no near relations, he left the bulk of his property, amounting to £1500, to his faithful black servant, Francis Barber, whom he looked upon as particularly under his protection, and whom he had long treated as a humble friend. He appointed Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir John Hawkins, and Dr. (Sir William) Scott his executors. His death attracted

the public attention in an uncommon degree, and was followed by an unprecedented accumulation of literary honours, in the various forms of sermons, elegies, memoirs, lives, essays, and anecdotes.

For a just character of this great man, we must content ourselves with laying before our readers this short sketch. His stature was tall, his limbs were large, his strength was more than common, and his activity in early life had been greater than such a form gave reason to expect: but he was subject to

an infirmity of the convulsive kind, resembling the distemper called St. Vitus's dance; and he had the seeds of so many diseases sown in his constitution, that a short time before his death he declared, that he hardly remembered to have passed one day wholly free from pain. He possessed very extraordinary powers of understanding, which were much cultivated by reading; and still more by meditation and reflection. His memory was remarkably retentive, his imagination uncommonly vigorous, and his judgment keen and penetrating. He read with great rapidity, retained with wonderful exactness what he so easily collected, and possessed the power of reducing to order and system the scattered hints on any subject which he had gathered from different books. It would not perhaps be safe to claim for him the highest place, among his contemporaries, in any single department of literature; but, to use one of his own expressions, he brought more mind to every subject, and had a greater variety of knowledge ready for all occasions, than any other man that could be easily named. Though prone to superstition, he was in all other respects so remarkably incredulous, that Hogarth said while Johnson firmly believed the Bible, he seemed determined to believe nothing but the Bible. Of the importance of religion he had a strong sense, and his zeal for its interest was always awake; so that profaneness of every kind was abashed in his presence. The same energy which was displayed in his literary productions, was exhibited also in his conversation, which was various,

striking, and instructive: like the sage in 'Rasselas,' he spoke, and attention watched his lips; he reasoned, and conviction closed his periods: when he pleased he could be the greatest sophist that ever contended in the list of declamation; and perhaps no man ever equalled him in nervous and pointed repartees. His veracity, from the most trivial to the most solemn occasions, was strict even to severity: he scorned to embellish a story with fictitious circumstances; for what is not a representation of reality, he used to say, is not worthy of our attention. As his purse and his house were ever open to the indigent, so was his heart tender to those who wanted relief, and his soul was susceptible of gratitude and every kind impression. He had a roughness in his manner which subdued the saucy and terrified the weak but it was only in his manner; for no man was more beloved than Johnson was by those who knew him; and his works will be read with veneration for their author, as long as the language in which they are written shall be understood!

END OF DR. JOHNSON'S LIFE.