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an easy-going man; now and again fires off an innocent jest, and busies himself in his new farm, with his two horses, wall-eyed Blackberry and the other without a tail: "Nothing could exceed the neatness of my enclosures, the elms and hedge-rows appearing with inexpressible beauty. . . . Our little habitation was situated at the foot of a sloping hill, sheltered with a beautiful underwood behind, and a prattling river before; on one side a meadow, on the other a green. (It) consisted but of one storey, and was covered with thatch, which gave it an air of great snugness; the walls on the inside were nicely whitewashed. Though the same room served us for parlour and kitchen, that only made it the warmer. Besides, as it was kept with the utmost neatness, the dishes, plates, and coppers, being well scoured, and all disposed in bright rows on the shelves, the eye was agreeably relieved, and did not want richer furniture." They make hay all together, sit under the honeysuckle to drink a bottle of gooseberry wine; the girls sing, the two little ones read; and the parents "would stroll down the sloping field, that was embellished with blue bells and centaury:" "But let us have one bottle more, Deborah, my life, and Moses, give us a good song. What thanks do we not owe to heaven for thus bestowing tranquillity, health, and competence! I think myself happier now than the greatest monarch upon earth. He has no such fireside, nor such pleasant

faces about it."2

Such is moral happiness. Their misfortune is no less moral. The poor vicar has lost his fortune, and, removing to a small living, turns farmer. The squire 1 The Vicar of Wakefield, ch. iv.

2 Ibid. ch. xvii.

of the neighbourhood seduces and carries off his eldest daughter; his house takes fire; his arm was burnt in a terrible manner in saving his two little children. He is put in prison for debt, amongst wretches and rogues, who swear and blaspheme, in a vile atmosphere, sleeping on straw, feeling that his illness increases, foreseeing that his family will soon be without bread, learning that his daughter is dying. Yet he does not give way he remains a priest and the head of a family, prescribes to each of them his duty; encourages, consoles, provides for, orders, preaches to the prisoners, endures their coarse jests, reforms them; establishes in the prison useful work, and "institutes fines for punishment and rewards for industry." It is not hardness of heart nor a morose temperament which gives him strength; he has the most paternal soul, the most sociable, humane, open to gentle emotions and familiar tenderness. He says: "I have no resentment now; and though he (the squire) has taken from me what I held dearer than all his treasures, though he has wrung my heart (for I am sick almost to fainting, very sick, my fellow-prisoner), yet that shall never inspire me with vengeance. . . . If this (my) submission can do him any pleasure, let him know, that if I have done him any injury, I am sorry for it. . . . I should detest my own heart, if I saw either pride or resentment lurking there. On the contrary, as my oppressor has been once my parishioner, I hope one day to present him up an unpolluted soul at the eternal tribunal."1 But the hard-hearted squire haughtily repulses the noble application of the vicar, and in addition causes his second daughter to be carried off, and the eldest son to be thrown into prison under a false

1 The Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xxviii.

accusation of murder. of the father are wounded, all his consolations lost, all his hopes ruined. "His heart weeps to behold" all this misery, he was going to curse the cause of it all; but soon, returning to his profession and his duty, he thinks how he will prepare to fit his son and himself for eternity, and by way of being useful to as many people as he can, he wishes at the same time to exhort his fellow-prisoners. He "made an effort to rise on the straw, but wanted strength, and was able only to recline against the wall; my son and his mother supported me on either side."1 In this condition he speaks, and his sermon, contrasting with his condition, is the more moving. It is a dissertation in the English style, made up of close reasoning, seeking only to establish that "Providence has given to the wretched two advantages over the happy in this life," greater felicity in dying; and in heaven all that superiority of pleasure which arises from contrasted enjoyments.2 We see the sources of this virtue, born of Christianity and natural kindness, but long nourished by inner reflection. Meditation, which usually produces only phrases, results with Dr. Primrose in actions. Verily reason has here taken the helm, and it has taken it without oppressing other feelings; a rare and eloquent spectacle, which, uniting and harmonising in one character the best features of the manners and morals of that time and country, creates an admiration and love for pious and orderly, domestic and disciplined, laborious and rural life. Protestant and English virtue has not a more approved and amiable exemplar. Religious, affectionate, rational, the Vicar unites predilections 1 The Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xxviii.

At this moment all the affections

2 Ibid. ch. xxix.

which seemed irreconcilable; a clergyman, a farmer, a head of a family, he enhances those characters which appeared fit only for comic or homely parts.

IX.

We now come upon a strange character, the most esteemed of his time, a sort of literary dictator. Richardson was his friend, and gave him essays for his paper; Goldsmith, with an artless vanity, admires him, whilst suffering to be continually outshone by him; Miss Burney imitates his style, and reveres him as a father. Gibbon the historian, Reynolds the painter, Garrick the actor, Burke the orator, Sir William Jones the Orientalist, come to his club to converse with him. Lord Chesterfield, who had lost his favour, vainly tried to regain it, by proposing to assign to him, on every word in the language, the authority of a dictator.1 Boswell dogs his steps, sets down his opinions, and at night fills quartos with them. His criticism becomes law; men crowd to hear him talk; he is the arbiter of style. Let us transport in imagination this ruler of mind, Dr. Samuel Johnson, into France, among the pretty drawing-rooms, full of elegant philosophers and epicurean manners; the violence of the contrast will mark better than all argument the bent and predilections of the English mind.

There appears then before us a man whose "person was large, robust, approaching to the gigantic, and grown unwieldy from corpulency," with a gloomy and

1 See, in Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Croker, 1853, ch. xi. p. 85, Chesterfield's complimentary paper on Johnson's Dictionary, printed in the World. 2 Ibid. ch. xxx. 269.

unpolished air," his countenance disfigured by the king's evil," and blinking with one of his eyes, "in a full suit of plain brown clothes," and with not overclean linen, suffering from morbid melancholy since his birth, and moreover a hypochondriac.1 In company he would sometimes retire to a window or corner of a room, and mutter a Latin verse or a prayer.2 At other times, in a recess, he would roll his head, sway his body backward and forward, stretch out and then convulsively draw back his leg. His biographer relates that it "was his constant anxious care to go out or in at a door or passage, . . . so as that either his right or his left foot should constantly make the first actual movement; . . . when he had neglected or gone wrong in this sort of magical movement, I have seen him go back again, put himself in the proper posture to begin the ceremony, and having gone through it, walk briskly on and join his companion." 3 People are sitting at table, when suddenly, in a moment of abstraction, he stoops, and clenching hold of the foot of a lady, draws off her shoe. Hardly is the dinner served when he darts on the food; "his looks seemed rivetted to his plate; nor would he, unless when in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others; (he) indulged with such intenseness, that, while in the act of eating, the veins of his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible." 5 If by chance the hare was high, or the pie had been made with rancid butter, he no longer ate, but devoured. When at last his appetite was satisfied, and he con

1 Life of Johnson, ch. iii. 14 and 15. 3 Ibid. ch. xviii. 166.

2 Ibid. ch. xviii. 165, n. 4. 4 Ibid. ch. xlviii. 439, n. 3.

5 Ibid. ch. xvii. 159.