Albans, and was thought in some particulars to have a resemblance to Charles the Second. These were high recommendations with Johnson, and when the youth testified a profound respect for him and an ardent admiration of his talents, the conquest was complete, so that in a "short time," says Boswell, "the moral pious Johnson and the gay dissipated Beauclerc were companions."

The intimacy begun in college chambers was continued when the youths came to town during the vacations. The uncouth, unwieldly moralist, was flattered at finding himself an object of idolatry to two high-born, high-bred, aristocratic young men, and throwing gravity aside, was ready to join in their vagaries, and play the part of a young man upon town."

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During the year 1759 he carried on his "Idler," and was proceeding leisurely with his "Shakspere." He had previously quitted his house in Gough-square, and lived in Gray's Inn. He now removed to chambers in the Inner Temple Lane, "where he lived" (says Mr. Murphy) "in poverty, and total idleness, and the pride of literature. Magni stat nominis umbra." Mr. Fitzherbert paid him a visit one morning, intending to write a letter from his chambers; but found him without pen, ink, or paper!

At length Fortune smiled upon him: he had long struggled for a precarious subsistence, which even his great talents, and now confirmed reputation, did not always insure him; but in the month of July, 1762, the king conferred upon him a pension of three hundred pounds per annum; he obtained it by the interference of Lord Bute, upon the suggestion of Mr. Wedderburn (afterwards Lord Loughborough).

Through the medium of Boswell's Memoir and the additions made to it by Mr. Croker, we are from this time

made as familiar as it is in the power of writing to make us with the character, the habits, and the appearance of Johnson, and the persons and things with which he was connected. Everything about him, his coat, his wig, his figure, his face, his scrofula, his St. Vitus's dance, his rolling walk, his blinking eye, the outward signs which too clearly marked the approbation of his dinner, his insatiable appetite for fish-sauce and veal-pie with plums, his inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick of touching the posts as he walked, and his mysterious practice of treasuring up scraps of orange-peel, his morning slumbers, his midnight disputations, his contortions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his puffings; his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence; his sarcastic wit, his vehemence, his insolence, his fits of tempestuous rage, his queer inmates -old Mr. Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat Hodge, and the negro Frank-all are as familiar to us as the objects by which we have been surrounded from childhood.

In 1765, the university of Dublin sent over a diploma creating him a Doctor of Laws, but he did not assume the title of doctor until ten years afterwards, when the university of Oxford conferred the same honour upon him.

He removed from the Inner Temple to a good house in Johnson's-court, Fleet-street, in 1766. Miss Williams, a woman of considerable talents and literature, had before been an inmate in his house, while undergoing an operation for a cataract in both her eyes, which ended in total blindness: and he now allotted her an apartment in his new establishment: while his humble friend Levett took up his usual post in the garret.

Johnson was in the habit of visiting the royal library at the Queen's (Buckingham) house, in the formation of which he had assisted the librarian, Mr. Bernard, with his advice.

One evening, while seated there, he was surprised by the entrance of the King (George III.), who sought this opportunity to have a conversation with him. Their talk was varied and discursive; the King shifting from subject to subject according to his wont; and during the whole interview, Johnson talked to his majesty with profound respect, but still in his open, manly manner, and not in the subdued tone which is commonly used at the court. "I found his majesty wished I should talk," said he, “and I made it my business to talk. I find it does a man good to be talked to by his sovereign. In the first place, a man cannot be in a passion." Among other questions, the King asked him if he was writing anything. His reply was, that he thought he had nearly done his part as a writer. "I should have thought so too," said the king, “if you had not written so well." "No man," said Johnson, at Sir Joshua Reynolds', "could have made a handsomer compliment; and it was fit for a king to pay. It was decisive." "But did you make no reply to this high compliment ?" said one of the company. No, sir," said Johnson "when the king had said it, it was to be so.

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not for me to bandy civilities with my sovereign."

It was

In 1766 his constitution seemed to be rapidly giving way, and he was depressed with a deep and gloomy melancholy. In this condition his friend Mr. Thrale received him into his house at Streatham; an apartment was fitted up for him, companions were invited from London, and he became a constant resident in the family. His celebrity attracted the notice of the king, to whom he was introduced by the librarian of Buckingham House. We are not told that politics had in any way led to this introduction, but it is not impossible that the opinions that Johnson entertained

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upon the principal questions of the day might have reached the king's ears. For several years he occasionally published political pamphlets.

He now turned his attention to politics, and published two pamphlets in vindication of the ministry; "The False Alarm," in 1770, and "Falkland's Island," in 1771. In the zenith of his political celebrity, Mr. Strahan, the king's printer, made an attempt to bring him into parliament; but the overture made to government was unsuccessful.

In 1773 he made a journey to the Hebrides, in company with Mr. Boswell, the results of which are before the public in his own account, and in the entertaining journal of his companion. He published two more political pamphlets; "The Patriot," in 1774, and "Taxation no Tyranny," in 1775. In the month of March, in this year, he was gratified by the University of Oxford conferring on him the degree of Doctor of Laws, at the solicitation of Lord North. He visited France, in company with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, in October of this year. Foote happened to be in Paris at the time, and said the French were perfectly astonished at his figure and manner, his brown clothes, black stockings, and plain shirt. He kept a journal of the occurrences in this tour, probably with a view to writing an account of it; but he never put his intention into practice.

He removed from Johnson's Court to a large house in Bolt Court, in 1776, where he had a garden which he took delight in watering. Besides his inmates, Miss Williams and Levett, he now appropriated an apartment to Mrs. Desmoulins (daughter of his godfather, Dr. Swinfen, and widow of a writing master), together with her daughter, and a Miss Carmichael. His benevolence to the unfortu

nate, at all periods of his life, was exemplary; he allowed Mrs. Desmoulins, who had been left destitute, half-a-guinea a week, which was above the twelfth part of his income. Mrs. Piozzi relates, that "his inmates made his life miserable, from the impossibility he found of making theirs happy. He was oftentimes afraid of going home, because he was sure to be met at the door with numberless complaints." Another trait of his feeling and benevolent disposition was the strenuous exertion he made by appeals from his eloquent pen in favour of the unhappy Dr. Dodd.

The last of his literary labours was "The Lives of the Poets," which were completed in 1781. We now take leave of him as an author, and have only to record the few domestic occurrences which took place before the close of his long life. These are for the most part melancholy. His friends, Mr. Thrale and Mrs. Williams, preceded him to the grave. In June, 1783, he had a paralytic stroke, and in the following November was greatly swollen with the dropsy. During a journey to Derbyshire he felt a temporary relief; but in 1784 he suffered both from dropsy and from asthma. His diseases were evidently irremediable; the thought of death preyed upon his mind, and the history of his deathbed is painful. On Monday, the 13th December, 1784, he expired in his house in Bolt Court; on the 20th of the month his remains, with due solemnity and a numerous attendance of his friends, were buried in Westminster Abbey, near the foot of Shakspere's monument, and close to the grave of Mr. Garrick. A monument a full-length statue -by Bacon, forms one of the chief ornaments of St. Paul's Cathedral.

The characteristic peculiarity of Johnson's intellect was the