His first notable work was a Dictionary of the English Language, which his publisher engaged him to make, agreeing to pay him fifteen hundred and seventy-five pounds for the work, paid in installments, a guinea at a time, as he furnished the copy. He agreed to complete the work in three years, but although begun in 1747, it was not published till 1755. But in the meantime he did other work. It occurred to him in his intervals of compiling the dictionary to edit a paper on the plan of Addison and Steele inthe Spectator, and thus he began the Rambler, writing a series of two hundred papers by that name. Of all his works none was so popular as this. Goldsmith gives the general opinion about it in one of his essays called The Fame Machine, in which he represents a small carriage as taking passengers to the Temple of Fame. As Goldsmith is talking to the coachman, hẹ says:

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"" A grave personage appeared, whom at some distance I took for one of the most reserved and even disagreeable persons I had ever seen, but as he approached, his appearance improved, and when I could distinguish him thoroughly, I perceived that in spite of the severity of his frown, he had one of the most good-natured countenances that could be imagined. Upon coming to open the stage-door, he lifted a parcel of folios into the seat before him, but our inquisitive coachman at once shoved them out again. What, not take in my Dictionary?" exclaimed the other, in a rage. “Be patient, sir,” replied the coachman, "I have drove a coach, man and boy, these two thousand years, but I do not remember to have carried but one dictionary during that time. That little work peeping out of your pocket, may I presume to ask what it contains?" "A mere trifle," replied the author, "it is called the Rambler." "The Rambler!" cries the coachman, "I beg, sir, you'll take your place. I have heard our ladies in the court of Apollo, mention it with rapture, and Clio, who happens to be a little grave, prefers it to the Spectator, though others have observed that the reflections, by being refined, becomes sometimes minute."

Besides the works which I have mentioned, he wrote a series of Lives of the Poets, which were written as prefaces to an edition of the works of the English Poets. These

were so much esteemed as criticism, that they took their place in literature as critical biographies, independent of the work for which they were written. They included the lives of Milton, Parnell, Waller, Dryden, Pope, Thomson, Gray, and many others. He also edited Shakspeare, with criticism on the plays. Of the poets of his own time, and of the school which he had been educated to believe was the correct school in poetry, he could write with excellent judgment; but Milton, Shakspeare, the poets of the Elizabethan ages, were too great for him, and the present age does not accept his criticism of them.

His story of Rasselas, a little work which has taken a place among English classics, is the most readable of all his works. It is the account of an eastern prince who is reared in a happy valley, and guarded from all knowledge of evil, but finally grows weary of the monotony of his life and wanders through the world in the vain search after happiness. It was written, so Johnson said, to pay the funeral expenses of his mother and some little debts she left at death, and the author got for it one hundred and twenty-five pounds.

The Johnsonian style is in pompous and long-syllabled words, many of them words of Latin origin. He underrated the value of strong, homely English, and when he had expressed himself in plain, direct words, he was apt to translate himself into a more verbose style. Boswell gives some good instances as once when he said vigorously-speaking of one of the comedies of the time of Charles II: "It had not wit enough to keep itself sweet," and immediately changed this to "it had not enough vitality to preserve it from putrefaction." Macaulay finds a still better instance from one of his familiar letters, when he was traveling in the Hebrides. He writes, "when we were taken up stairs, a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed in which we were to lie." Afterwards when he printed the journal of these travels, he gave the account thus: "Out of one of the beds in which we were to repose, started up at our entrance, a man, black as Cyclops

from the forge." This is what Macaulay wittily calls "putting a sentence out of English into Johnsonese."

In person Johnson was awkward, stooping, with shambling gait, head rolling from side to side, and face disfigured with marks of scrofula. In manners he must have been very disagreeable, as he was often rude to excess, intolerant and over-bearing in conversation, and regardless of the feelings of others. He was extremely narrow-minded in some of his views; a Tory who could hardly bear the name of Whig; an Englishman who hated all foreigners, and declared the Americans at the outbreak of their revolution, "a party of convicts who ought to be hanged;" a churchman who had no mercy for dissenters; and a partisan in most of his literary opinions. Yet, with so much to be disliked, he was a generous man, whose house was filled with poor people who lived on his bounty; he was very tender to distress, and was a truthful, honest, independent

man.

Johnson was the center of the Literary Club started in his day, which had Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Joshua Reynolds the artist, David Garrick, and other famous men, among its members. This club was one of his haunts, and another was the house of Mr. Thrale, a wealthy gentleman who befriended him, where he took tea once a week, till for a time he took up his abode in the house altogether. Mrs. Thrale, who was a lively, sweet-tempered woman, made. much of him, and poured his tea cheerfully; not a light office, for he drank a dozen cups at a sitting, and once took twenty-five at one tea-drinking, to the disgust and horror of his hostess.

Johnson did more than any other one man in English letters to make literature a working profession-to take it out of the hands of patrons, and make the dealings of author and publisher a substantial business relation. He was one of the first English authors who lived by his work, and the honest independence with which he inspired the profession, has been a help to authors ever since his time.

His dictionary, too, was one of the great works of the century. While we can not help wishing that the Johnsonian tendency in language had been towards greater simplicity and not towards the introduction of so many Latin words, still we must see that he did a great work for language. In his time there was no standard dictionary-the best one very imperfect and Johnson in arranging and defining the words of the language, brought it into order and gave it form. He singly and alone attempted to do for England what the French Academy did for France, and although it is a question whether it is not better to have so important a work done by a body of scholars rather than by one man alone, yet nobody in raising that question, will doubt the value and honesty of Samuel Johnson's labors.

TALK XLVII.

ON OLIVER GOLDSMITH AND "THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD."

THE name of Oliver Goldsmith is often heard in connecBorn 1728. tion with that of Dr. Johnson, and the two men were Died 1774. excellent friends, although Johnson was twenty years older than Goldsmith, and, in a kindly way, disposed to patronize his young friend.

Goldsmith's early life was a chequered one. After leaving college he made an attempt to enter life at most of its principal gates. He tried teaching, the law, the church, medicine, until, throwing up all the professions, he started on a vagabond tour through Europe, from which he returned to London, poor, alone, unfriended, and with no settled calling in life. He began his literary career by writing for a magazine, the drudge of a publisher who worked him hard and paid him little. But in this work Goldsmith first discovered what he was capable of doing, and this was the first step in the ladder he climbed so rapidly.

1756.

His literary life lasted about fifteen years, and in this time he produced poetry, history, biography, works on natural science, essays, novels, and comedies, with wonderful versatility, and with success in almost every style. With work or without it, he was always in debt, for he was reckless and improvident to excess, and never could resist the passion for gambling, which in early youth was nearly his ruin. His first success was in essay writing. He published the Bee, which in lightness and vivacity was in strong contrast to the dignity and weight of Johnson's Rambler. If Johnson and Goldsmith had united their powers, as Addison and Steel had done forty years earlier, they would have made a paper almost, if not quite, as good as the Spectator.

After the Bee, Goldsmith contributed to a newspaper The Letters of a Chinese Philosopher, professedly written by a Chinese gentleman traveling in England, who notes all that impresses him as odd in government, society, and morals, and compares them favorably or unfavorably, with Eastern customs. You can fancy what an opportunity Goldsmith found in the person of the Chinese gentleman for good-natured satire against whatever in politics or manners deserved it.

His first fame was won by his poem, The Traveller, in which he put the impressions and memories of his tour in Europe into verse. This brought him reputation among literary men, and the praise with which it was received encouraged the publishers to bring out the Vicar of Wakefield, which had been some time in their hands. This story is of all his works, the one which brings him closest to his readers of the present. I have never seen any one, young or old, who did not read it with delight, and I believe it will continue to be read as long as the eighteenth century is remembered in literature. Dr. Johnson gives this account of how the Vicar came to be published:

"I received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith, that he was in great distress, and as it was not in his power to come to me,