himself of this convenient opportunity for insulting an established Tory reputation, celebrated the ghost-story in three cantos, nicknamed Johnson Pomposo, inquired after the book, and did not shrink from charging him with cheating. This coarse imputation had the happy effect of awakening him from his torpor; and in 1765 he redeemed his engagement with the public. In the interval between this year and 1775 only three or four political tracts and a few small pieces attested his existence. Honours, however, were not wanting to him. In 1767 he had an interview with the king, in which his Majesty graciously expressed a hope that he would not cease to write. In 1769 he was appointed Professor in Ancient Literature to the Royal Academy; and in 1775 Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L.

Meanwhile social life had been cultivated, to the enlivening of his clouded soul. In 1763 he was introduced to Boswell; and in the following year was founded The Literary Club, of which Reynolds, Goldsmith, Gibbon, Burke, Beauclerk, Langton, Garrick, and others such as these, were members. In such a congenial sphere it was that he loved to fold his legs, as he said, and have his talk out. In the bosom of the Thrale family, whose society he was fortunate in securing about this time, he found all the tender comforts of domestic life, both at the brewery (still under the title of Barclay & Perkins dispensing excellent stout) in Southwark and at Streatham. Thralia dulcis, admirably qualified to illustrate "the endearing elegance of female friendship," for several years sedulously ministered to his happiness; and we can well imagine the feeling of delight with which he must have availed himself of this retreat from his own strangely assorted household in Bolt Court, in which, as he graphically put it, Williams hated everybody, Levett hated Desmoulins and did not love Williams, Desmoulins hated both, and Poll loved none of them; the object of their combined attacks being his faithful negro servant

Frank Barber, whom he did not forget in his will. A time came (alas !) when Thralia, wedding Signor Piozzi, was no longer dulcis; but the years passed by Johnson under her hospitable roof certainly were the happiest he ever spent.

The "Journey to the Hebrides," published in 1775, provoked the ire of some over-sensitive Scotchmen, who took a savage pleasure in charging him with being blear-eyed, with being a pensioner, and with having had an uncle convicted of felony in Scotland, who found that there was in that country at least one tree capable of supporting the weight of an Englishman. Nor was hostility confined to verbal castigation. Macpherson, whose impudent attempt to palm Ossian off for original poetry had been denounced by Johnson, threatened to square accounts with a cane; but the Doctor was not to be terrified into submission. When Foote expressed his intention to caricature him on the stage, he inquired the price of an oak stick, and being told that sixpence was the declared value, "Why then, sir," he said to Davies, "give me leave to send your servant to purchase me a shilling one; for I am told Foote means to take me off, as he calls it, and I am determined the fellow shall not do it with impunity." Age-he was at this period sixty-six-had not extinguished his constitutional fire; so he lost no time in informing the furious Scot that he was not to be "deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian." Had Macpherson come on, assuredly he would have had an intensely warm reception.

A new edition of the English poets from Cowley downwards being contemplated by the booksellers, Johnson in 1777 was invited to furnish short biographical prefaces. This was a literary task for which he was exactly qualified. Originally he designed to give only a paragraph to minor poets, and four or five pages to the greater; but the flood of anecdote and criticism, as Macaulay happily says, overflowed the narrow channel; and sheets were expanded into volumes. It is instructive to note

that, whereas the author's remuneration was three hundred guineas, the publishers reaped nearly six thousand pounds. Sic vos non vobis!

With this supreme effort of his genius, which continues to be a text-book to literary students to the present day, Johnson's intellectual activity came to an end. Death had been busy in the circle of his friends. The generously appreciative Thrale no longer was at Streatham, and his widow had married an Italian fiddler. The members of his own household, to whom he was attached in spite of their habits, had dropped off in succession; and his home, by its quiet, only served to remind him of an unwelcome topic, the fugacity of life. Dropsy and asthma assailed him together. He clung to life with terrible tenacity, imploring his surgeons to make the incisions in his legs deeper and deeper. His bedside was cheered by the assiduous ministrations of attached friends, of Burke, and Windham, and Langton, and Frances Burney; and the ablest of the medical faculty benevolently exerted their skill.

But the imperious summons of Death was not to be evaded. When the final moment arrived, it is gratifying to learn that the patient, who had battled against dissolution so stoutly, recovered his mental serenity and awaited his end with Christian resignation and hope. He expired on the

13th of December, 1784; and his remains were laid, a week later, in Westminster Abbey, near the foot of Shakspeare's monument and close beside Garrick - in that famous south transept lustrous with memorials of the celebrated writers of whose lives and works he had been the historian and the critic.

JOHNSONIANA.

I.

EDUCATION.

́HO first taught the young idea how to shoot? We

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naturally are interested in all particulars relating to the earliest unfoldings of mind. We have a tender concern in watching the development of infant genius. The distinction of being Johnson's first teacher belongs to Dame Oliver, a widow who kept a school for young children in Lichfield. She must have watched his mental progress with no ordinary gratification; for we read that when he was leaving for Oxford she came to take leave of him, brought him in the simplicity of her kindness a present of gingerbread, and said he was the best scholar she ever had; a compliment to his juvenile powers which he delighted in mentioning, with the playful comment that it was high a proof of his merit as he could conceive." of Dame Oliver he passed into the hands of a master to whom he used to refer familiarly as Tom Brown. All the information that survives to us of this gentleman centres in Johnson's own statement that he was the author of a spelling-book whichlarge-souled man that he was-he dedicated to THE UNIVERSE. It is painful to add that the Universe was not sufficiently mindful of such heroic conduct, for Johnson feared that even in his time no copy of it could be had.

as

From the charge

Our next view of Johnson is a clearer one, for he emerges

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from the seclusion of domestic life into the full glare of a public school. It is on record that he began to learn Latin with Mr. Hawkins, an under-master of Lichfield school; whom he pronounced "very skilful in his little way." With him he continued two years, and then rose to be under the care of Mr. Hunter, the head master, who, according to his account, was very severe-and wrong-headedly severe. He used," said he, "to beat us unmercifully; and he did not distinguish between ignorance and negligence, for he would beat a boy equally for not knowing a thing as for neglecting to know it. He would ask a boy a question, and, if he did not answer it, he would beat him, without considering whether he had an opportunity of knowing how to answer it. For instance, he would call up a boy and ask him Latin for a candlestick, which the boy could not expect to be asked. Now, sir, if a boy could answer every question, there would be no need of a master to teach him."

It is, however, but justice to the memory of Mr. Hunter to mention that, though he might err in being too severe, the school of Lichfield was very respectable under his administration. Dr. Taylor, prebendary of Westminster, who was educated under him, told Boswell that "he was an excellent master, and that his ushers were most of them men of eminence; that Holdbrook, one of the most ingenious men, best scholars, and best preachers of his age, was usher during the greater part of the time that Johnson was at school. Then came Hague, of whom as much might be said, with the addition that he was an elegant poet. Hague was succeeded by Green, afterwards bishop of Lincoln, whose character in the learned world is well known. In the same form with Johnson was Congreve, who afterwards became chaplain to Archbishop Boulter, and by that connexion obtained good preferment in Ireland. He was a younger son of the ancient family of Congreve, in Staffordshire, of which the poet's was a branch. There was also Lowe, afterwards canon of Windsor."