His cenfures of the writings of lord Lyttelton, and of Gray, gave great offence to the friends of each : the first coft him the friendship of a lady, whofe remarks on the genius of Shakespeare have raifed her to a degree of eminence among the female writers of this time; and the fuppofed injury done by him to the memory of Gray, is refented by the whole univerfity of Cambridge. The character of Swift he has ftigmatized with the brand of pride and selfishness, so deeply impreffed, that the marks thereof feem indelible. In the praises of his wit, he does him no more than juftice; of his moral qualities, he has made the moft; and of his learning, of which Swift poffeffed but a very small portion, he has faid nothing. Few can be offended at Johnfon's account of this man, whofe arrogance and malevolence were a reproach to human nature; and in whofe voluminous writings little is to be found, that can conduce to the improvement or benefit of mankind, or, indeed, that it befeemed a clergyman to publish.

In his own judgment of the lives of the poets, Johnfon gave the preference to that of Cowley, as containing a nicer inveftigation and difcrimination of the characteristics of wit, than is elfewhere to be found. Others have affigned to Dryden's life the pre-eminence. Upon the whole, it is a finely written, and an entertaining book, and is likely to be coeval with the memory of the beft of the writers whom it celebrates,

To the life of Pope, he thought proper to adjoin a criticifin on the epitaphs of that poet, written fome years before, and inferted in a monthly pamphlet, intitled The Vifitor,' in which he detects a great

number

number of faulty paffages, and puerile fentiments, An attempt of the like kind had formerly been made by Concanen, one of the Dunciad heroes, in a paper called The Speculatift,' first published in one of the periodical papers of the day, and afterwards collected into an octavo volume; but it went no farther than to a cenfure of the infcription on Craggs's monument in Westminster abbey, which, by the way, was never intended for an epitaph, but is an eulogium on that statefman, taken from Pope's Epiftle to Mr. Addison, occafioned by his dialogues on medals.' Johnfon has noticed this, and apologizing for fome faults in it, imputes them, in his strong manner of expreffion, to the violence with which the lines were torn from the original. The whole of Concanen's criticifm turns upon the length of the inscription, which is fix lines, and, by a strange blunder of Pope, is recommended as a motto for the fuppofed medal to be ftruck in commemoration of his services, and gives occafion to the critic to afk Is this a motto for a medal or a mill

• stone.'

But Johnson, who never examined the writings of any author, but with an eye the most penetrating, has taken a nearer view of thefe compofitions of Pope, as they appear in his works, and discovered, that scarce any one of them, notwithstanding the beauty of verfification which they difplay, will bear the test of found criticifi. For his remarks on them, this is no fit place: the inquifitive reader is therefore referred for the perufal of them to the life of Pope, among the pocts; and, for farther information on the fubject of monumental infcriptions, to An Effay on Epitaphs,' among his philological tracts,

All

All that is neceffary to remark on his examen of Pope's epitaphs is, that, in one inftance, it was productive of a fingular event, the total erafure of that epitaph on Sir Godfrey Kneller's monument in Westminster abbey, which had long been objected to, as being a very indifferent imitation of cardinal Bembo's famous distich on Raphael; and it seems that the author thought fo, for, in the later editions of his works, he has omitted it.

Ille hic eft Raphaël, timuit quo fofpite vinci

Rerum magna parens, & moriente mori.'

After he had finifhed the lives of the poets, Johnson, contemplating the strength of his mental powers, was fo little fenfible of any decay in them, that he entertained a defign of giving to the world a tranflation of that voluminous work of Thuanus, the history of his own times, an undertaking furely too laborious for one who had nearly completed the age of man, and whofe mind was generally occupied by fubjects of greater importance than any that relate to this world. But, in this estimate of his abilities, he foon found himself deceived. Sleepless nights, and the ufe of opium, which he took in large quantities, alternately depreffed and raised his fpirits, and rendered him an incompetent judge of his own powers, fo that, had he purfued his refolution, he would, doubtlefs, have funk under the burden of fo great a labour.

It may farther be queftioned whether, upon trial, he would not have found himself unequal to the talk of transfufing into an English verfion the fpirit

of

of his author. Johnfon's talent was original thinking, and though he was ever able to exprefs his own fentiments in nervous language, he did not always fucceed in his attempts to familiarife the fenfe of others: his tranflation of Pere Lobo's voyage has little to recommend it but the fubject-matter. Among his papers was found, a tranflation from Salluft of the 'Bellum Catilinarium,' so flatly and infipidly rendered, that the fuffering it to appear would have been an indeligible difgrace to his memory.

We must now take our leave of Johnson as an author, and view him as a man worn out with literary labour and disease, contemplating his diffolution, and exerting all his powers to refift that conftitutional malady which now, more than ever, oppreffed him, To divert himself from a train of thinking which often involved him in a labyrinth of doubts and difficulties touching a future ftate of exiftence, he folicited the frequent vifits of his friends and acquaintance, the most difcerning of whom could not but fee, that the fabric of his mind was tottering; and, to allay thofe fcruples and terrors which haunted him in his vacant hours, he betook himself to the reading of books of practical divinity, and, among the rest, the writings of Baxter, and others of the old puritan and non-conforming divines. Of Baxter, he entertained a very high opinion, and often spoke of him to me as a man of great parts, profound learning, and exemplary piety: he faid, of the office for the communion drawn up by him and produced at the Savoy-conference, that it was one of the finest compofitions of the ritual kind he had ever feen*.

It is printed at the end of the first volume of Dr. Calamy's abridgement of Mr. Baxter's History of his Life and Times.

It was a circumstance to be wondered at, that a highchurchman, as Johnson ever professed himself to be, fhould be driven to feek for fpiritual comfort in the writings of fectaries; men whom he affected, as well to condemn for their ignorance, as to hate for their principles; but, as his acquaintance with the world, and with the writings of fuch men as Watts, Fofter, Lardner, and Lowman, increased, these prejudices were greatly foftened. Of the early puritans, he thought their want of general learning was atoned for by their skill in the Scriptures, and the holiness of their lives *; and, to justify his opinion of them,

Yet have there been among them a few, as eminent for their learning as their piety, and, in juftice to their memory, I will mention two of this character: the one was Gataker, well known for his excellent edition of the Meditations of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, and his Commentary on the prophecy of Jeremiah; the other, a fomewhat earlier writer, old Mr. Dod, furnamed the Decalogift, an exquifite Hebrew fcholar, a man of primitive fanctity, and a paffive non-conforming divine. His memory is not quite extinct among the diffenters of the prefent age, for I remember, in my youth, to have feen, in the window of an old bookfeller of that denomination, a printed broad sheet, with a wooden portrait at the top thereof, intitled Mr. Dod's fayings,' being a string of religious aphorifms, intended to be ftuck up in the houses of poor perfons. In Fuller's Worthies, page 181, and also in his Churchhiftory, book xi. page 219, are fome particulars that mark his character, and in the latter, page 220, the following note of his fimplicity. He was but coarfely used by the cavaliers, and when the foldiers, who came to plunder him, brought down the fheets out of his chamber, into the room where he fat by the fire-fide, he, in their • absence to search for more, took one pair, and clapped them under • his cushion whereon he fat, much pleafing himself, after their departure, that he had, as he faid, plundered the plunderers, and, by a lawful felony, had faved fo much of his own to himself. He died the fame year with archbishop Laud, 1646, and with him,' this author adds, the old puritan feemed to expire.'

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