In confequence of this perfuafion, he made an effort to be admitted a pleader in the courts of ecclefiaftical jurifdiction, but met with fuch an oppofition as obliged him to defift. Upon this, he bent his courfe another way, and, recurring to his firft defign of converting his school into a kind of female academy, fucceeded, not more to his own emolument, than the improvement of those who participated in the benefits of his tuition. In this train of events, and others that are well enough known, it may be difcerned, that Hawkefworth was a greater gainer by the Adventurer than any of thofe concerned in it. His fuccefs, however, wrought no good effects upon his mind and conduct; it elated him too much, and betrayed him into a forgetfulness of his origin, and a neglect of his early acquaintance; and on this I have heard Johnfon remark, in terms that fufficiently expreffed a knowledge of his character, and a refentment of his behaviour. It is probable that he might ufe the fame language to Hawkefworth himfelf, and alfo reproach him with the acceptance of an academical honour to which he could have no pretenfions, and, which Johnfon, conceiving to be irregular, as many yet do, held in great contempt; thus much is certain, that foon after the attainment of it, the intimacy between them ceased. The expedients above-mentioned, and the vifits of a variety of friends, which his writings had procured him, afforded Johnfon great relief, and enabled him to keep at a bay thofe terrors, which were almost inceffantly affailing him, till the beginning of the year 1752, O. S. when it pleased God to try him by a caJamity, which was very near realizing all thofe evils II which, for a series of years, he had dreaded: this was the lofs of his wife, who, on the 28th day of March, and after feventeen years cohabitation, left him a childlefs widower, abandoned to forrow, and incapable of confolation. Those who were beft acquainted with them both, wondered that Johnson could derive no comfort from the ufual resources, reflections on the conditions of mortality, the inftability of human happiness, refig nation to the divine will, and other topics; and the more, when they confidered, that their marriage was not one of those which inconfiderate young people call love-matches, and that fhe was more than old enough to be his mother; that, as their union had not been productive of children, the medium of a new relation between them was wanting; that her inattention to fome, at least, of the duties of a wife, were evident in the person of her husband, whose negligence of drefs seemed never to have received the leaft correction from her, and who, in the fordidness of his apparel, and the complexion of his linen, even fhamed her. For thefe reafons I have often been inclined to think, that if this fondness of Johnson for his wife was not diffembled, it was a leffon that he had learned by rote, and that, when he practifed it, he knew not where to ftop till he became ridiculous. It is true, he has celebrated her perfon in the word formofæ, which he caused to be inscribed on her grave-ftone; but could he, with that imperfection in his fight which made him fay, in the words of Milton, he never faw the human face divine, have been a witness of her beauty? which we may suppose had had fuftained fome lofs before he married; her daughter by her former husband being but little younger than Johnfon himself. As, during her lifetime, he invited but few of his friends to his house, I never faw her, but I have been told by Mr. Garrick, Dr. Hawkesworth, and others, that there was somewhat in the behaviour of them both; profound respect crazy on his part, and the airs of an antiquated beauty on her's. Johnfon had not then been ufed to the company of women, and nothing but his converfation rendered him tolerable among them: it was, therefore, neceffary that he should practice his best manners to one whom, as fhe was defcended from an ancient family, and had brought him a fortune, he thought his fuperior. This, after all, must be faid, that he laboured to raise his opinion of her to the highest, by inferting in many of her books of devotion that I have feen, fuch endearing memorials as thefe : This was dear Tetty's book.' This was a prayer which dear Tetty was accustomed to say,' not to mention his frequent recollection of her in his meditations, and the fingularity of his prayers respect ing her. To fo high a pitch had he worked his remembrance of her, that he requested a divine, of his acquaintance, to preach a fermon at her interment, which, probably, he would have written himself, but was diffuaded from fo oftentatious a difplay of the virtues of a woman, who, though fhe was his wife, was but little known. He intended alfo to have depofited her remains in the chapel in Tothill fields, Weftminfter, but, altering his mind, he committed the difpofal of them to his friend Hawkefworth, Hawkesworth, who buried her in his own parishchurch of Bromley in Kent, under a black marble ftone, on which Johnson himself, a few months before his death, caufed the following memorial to be infcribed: Hic conduntur reliquiæ Antiqua Jarvifiorum gente, Obiit Londini, mense Mart. A. D. MDCCLIII. I have been informed that, in his early youth, he entertained a romantic paffion, excited poffibly by reading the poets, for a young woman of a family and in circumstances far above him; but proofs are wanting that Johnson was, at any period of his life, fufceptible of amorous emotions. In his intercourfe with the world, he had become known to many of the female fex, who fought his converfation*, but it was never heard that he entertained a paffion for any one, or was in any other fense a lover, than as he was the author of amo Posterity will wonder to be told, that a celebrated courtezan, Kitty Fisher, was of the number, and that, poffibly having heard of the attempt of Laïs on Demofthenes, fhe once left her card at his houfe. rous rous verfes. If ever he was in danger of becoming one in reality, it was of a young woman whom he used to call Molly Afton, of whofe wit, and of the delight he enjoyed in converfing with her, he would speak with rapture*, but this was in the life-time of Mrs. Johnson, and he was a man too ftrict in his morals to give any reasonable cause of jealousy to a wife. The melancholy, which feized Johnson on the death of his wife, was not, in degree, fuch as ufually follows the deprivation of near relations and friends: it was of the blackeft and deepest kind. That affection, which could excite in the mind of Milton the pleafing images defcribed in his fonnet on his deceased wife, Methought I faw my late efpoufed faint,' wrought no fuch effect on that of Johnfon: the apparition of his departed wife was altogether of the terrific kind, and hardly afforded him a hope that fhe was in a state of happiness. • She was a violent whig, and, by confequence, a declaimer for liberty, a particular in her character that induced Johnson to compliment her in the following elegant epigram: Liber ut effe velim, fuafifti pulchra Maria, thus tranflated by Richard Paul Jodrell, Efq; When fair Maria's foft perfuafive strain That |