In the mean time I ray be permitted to relate an anecdote connected with literature and with this book. When my father was mon stone-mason in the town in which Robert Burns died, he made his way on foot to Edinburgh, foreseeing a better outlet for his genius than his native place was likely to afford. With the characteristic prudence of his countrymen he carried money with liim. His hunger and his thirst were both for books. When his labours of the day were over (he wrought in Edinburgh as a mason) he would repair to a sale-rooin kept by old Blackwood (afterwards eminent as a publisher), where books were sold at night by cheaper advances in price than those now in nise. For three shillings and eleven pence he bought Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets ’ in four volumes, then comparatively a dear book. As he was carrying off his purchase he was accosted by a gentleman who, arriving too late for the sale, offered a handsome per centage to the mason for the acquisition he was carrying delighted away. The offer was politely refused, much, as I have heard my father relate, to the surprise of the gentleman, who looked at his mason's apron and his purchase with mixed and increasing surprise. From this acquisition (gained by the sweat of the brow, in later years honoured with a better binding) my father learned much, and I have learned something. The reader who delights in biogrophy and has any liking for the notes that follow will excuse this anecdote. To my father's cheap but highly-prized acquisition the public is mainly indebted for a good work (the Lives of the British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects), and in that edition I first read Johnson, and determined twenty years ago to become his editor.

LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON.

BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.

SAMUEL Johnson, one of the most eminent English writers of the eighteenth century, was the son of Michael Johnson, who was, at the beginning of that century, a magistrate of Lichfield, and a bookseller of great note in the midland counties. Michael's abilities and attainments seem to have been considerable. He was so well acquainted with the contents of the volumes which he exposed to sale, that the country rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought him an oracle on points of learning. Between him and the clergy, indeed, there was a strong religious and political sympathy. He was a zealous churchman, and, though he qualified himself for municipal office by taking the oaths to the sovereign in possession, was to the last a Jacobite in heart. At his house, a house which is still pointed out to every traveller who visits Lichfield, Samuel was born on the 18th of September, 1709. In the child the physical, intellectual, and moral peculiarities which afterwards distinguished the man were plainly discernible ; great muscular strength accompanied by much awkwardness and many infirmities ; great quickness of parts, with a morbid propensity to sloth and procrastination ; a kind and generous heart, with a gloomy and irritable temper. He had inherited from his ancestors a scrofulous taint, which it was beyond the power of medicine to remove. His parents were weak enough to believe that the royal touch was a specific for this malady. In his third year he was taken up to London, inspected by the court surgeou, prayed over by the court chaplains, and stroked and presented with a piece of gold by Queen Anne. One of his earliest reccllections was that of a stately lady in a diamond stomacher and a long black hood. Her hand was applied in vain. The boy's features, which were originally noble and not irregular, were distorted by his malady. His cheeks were deeply scarred. He lost for a

time the sight of one eye, and he saw but very imperfectly with the other. But the force of his mind overcame every impediment. Indolent as he was, he acquired knowledge with such case and rapidity, that at every school to which he was sent he was soon the best scholar. From sixteen to eighteen he resided at home, and was left to his own devices. He learned much at this time, though his studies were without guidance and without plan. Ile ransacked his father's shelves, dipped into a multitude of books, read what was in teresting, and passed over what was dull. An ordinary lad would have acquired little or no useful knowledge in such a way ; but much that was dull to ordinary lads was interesting to Samuel. He read little Greek ; for liis proficiency in that language was not such that he could take much pleasure in the masters of Attic poetry and eloquence. But he had left school a good Latinist, and he soon acquired, in the large and miscellaneous library of which he now had the command, an extensive knowledge of Latin literature. That Augustan delicacy of taste, which is the boast of the great public schools of England, he never possessed. But he was early familiar with some classical writers, who were quite unknown to the best scholars in the sixth form at Eaton. lIe was peculiarly attracted by the works of the great restorers of learning. Once, while searching for some apples, he found a huge folio volume of Petrarch's works. The name excited his curiosity, and he eagerly devoured hundreds of pages. Indeed, the diction and versification of his own Latin coinpositions show that he had paid at least as much attention to modern copies from the antique as to the original models. While he was thus irregularly educating himself

, his family was sinking into hopeless poverty.

Old Michael Johnson was much better qualified to pore npon books, and to talk about them, than to trade in them. Ilis business declined ; his debts increased : it was with difficulty that the daily expenses of his household were defrayed. It was out of his power to support his son at either university ; but a wealthy neighbour offered assistance ; and, in reliance on promises which proved to be of very little value, Samuel was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the young scholar presented himself to the rulers of that society, they were amazed not more by his ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by the quantity of extensive and curious information which he had picked up during many months of desultory, but not unprofitable study. On the first day of his residence he surprised his teachers by quoting Macrobius; and one of the most learned among them declared, that he had never known a freshman of equal attainments.

At Oxford, Johnson resided during about three years. He was poor, even to raggedness ; and his appearance excited a mirth and a pity, which were equally intolerable to his haughty spirit. He was

a

driven from the quadrangle of Christ Church by the sneering looks which the members of that aristocratical society cast at the holes in his shoes. Some charitable person placed a new pair at his door ; but he spurned them away in a fury. Distress made him, not servile, but reckless and ungovernable. No opulent gentleman commoner, panting for one-and-twenty, could have treated the academical authorities with more gross disrespect. The needy scholar was generally to be seen under the gate of Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a circle of lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and dirty linen, his wit and audacity gave him an undisputed ascendency. In every mutiny against the discipline of the college he was the ringleader. Much was pardoned, however, to a youth so highly distinguished by abilities and acquirements. He had early made himself known by turning Pope's Messiah into Latin verse. The style and rhythm, indeed, were not exactly Virgilian ; but the translation found many admirers, and was read with pleasure by Pope himself.

The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the ordinary course of things, become a Bachelor of Arts : but he was at the end of his resources. Those promises of support on which he had relied had not been kept. His family could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford tradesmen were small indeed, yet larger than he could pay. In the autumn of 1731, he was under the necessity of quitting the university without a degree. In the following winter his father died. The old man left but a pittance ; and of that pittance almost the whole was appropriated to the support of his widow. The property to which Samuel succeeded amounted to no more than twenty pounds.

His life, during the thirty years which followed, was one hard struggle with poverty. The misery of that struggle needed no aggravation, but was aggravated by the sufferings of an unsound body and an unsound mind. Before the young man left the university, his hereditary malady had broken forth in a singularly cruel form. He had become an incurable hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been mad all his life, or at least not perfectly sane; and, in truth, eccentricities less strange than his have often been thought grounds sufficient for absolving felons, and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, bis mutterings, sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified people who did not know him. At a dinnertable he would, in a fit of absence, stoop down and twitch off a lady's shoe. He would amaze a drawing-room by suddenly ejaculating a clause of the Lord's Prayer. He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would set his heart on touching every post in the streets through which he walked. If by