cation, to the prying and malignant eye of the world. It is not merely the name of Johnfon that is to do service to any cause. His admirable arguments in favour of religion and morality, are not weakened by the proofs of his practical errors: These are always precisely what they were, once good, and always good. His arguments in favour of felf-denial do not lofe their force because he fasted, nor those in favour of devotion, because he said his prayers. His fafting and his prayers add strength to his pious reasonings, from the proof they afford, that he believed in the religion he inculcated. Human nature is frail; common frailties must inevitably preclude perfection to the least faulty profeffor of Chriftianity. The world never fuppofed Johnfon to have been a perfect character. His ftupendous abilities, and great learning, it is well known, could not preserve their poffeffor from the depreda 66 tions of melancholy. But his failings leaned to the fide of virtue. His fuperftition feems to have arisen from the most amiable difpofition in the world, a pious awe, and fear to have offended," a wish rather to do too much than too little. Such a difpofition one loves, and always wishes to find in a friend; and it cannot be difagreeable in the fight of him who made us. It argues a sensibility of heart, a tenderness of confcience, and the fear of God. That he should not be confcious of the abilities with which Providence had blessed him, was impossible.. He felt his own powers; he felt what he was capable of having performed, and he faw how little, comparatively speaking, he had performed. Hence his apprehenfions on the near profpect of the account to be made, viewed through the medium of conftitutional and morbid melancholy, which often excluded from his fight the bright beams of divine mercy. His felf-abasement was strictly ingenuous; but his expreffions, when compared with the tenor of his conduct, seem too difparaging. Christianity does not require us to deny any one quality we poffefs, or to represent ourselves, in defiance of truth, as one mass of deformity and guilt. The instruction of St. Paul, enforced by the most sacred example, is singly this, that we " think not of ourselves more highly than we ought to think; but that we think foberly." Johnson walked at all times humbly with his God; but when we follow him through all his weaknesses, his religious horrors, and facred punctilios, we are inclined to pity the constitutional feebleness of his nature, while we admire the perfeverance and fervour of his devotion. We owe to the excellencies of the Supreme Being, every possible degree of veneration and honour; but that virtue should tremble in 1 1 the prefence of Infinite Goodness, is not less contrary to reason, than it is contrary to heroism. In the presence of Infinite Goodness it feels a congeniality, and affumes a confidence, that leaps, as it were, the gulf between, and dares to aspire to sentiments of attachment, fidelity and love. But it would be unfair to conclude from this circumstance, that the piety and humility of Johnson were of no value; and the fincerity of his repentance, the stedfastness of his faith, and the fervour of his charity, of no use. There is something fo great and awful in the idea of a God, and something so fascinating in the effufions of gratitude, that there are numbers of men intrepid and heroical, in every other regard, that cannot boast of all the ferenity and afsurance in the business of religion, that are so earnestly to be defired; and yet the piety of these men is edifying and venerable. Indeed the fate of " the un 1 profitable servant" may justly beget appre henfions in the stoutest mind. Language affords no finer expreffions than those in which the Prayers of Johnson are conceived. They are short, simple, and unadorned. They bear fome refemblance to the Collects in the "Common Prayer-Book," without that dignity which is derived to the latter, from the venerable antiquity of the style and expreffion. They have no particular method, no display of genius, and no beauties that should characterize the man under whose name they appear. They have nothing that might not have been produced by any man of plain common fenfe. At the same time they contain few traces of weakness or abfurdity. Never did there exist a greater difparity between the performances of the fame author, than between this publication and the Lives of the Poets, or the numbers of the Rambler. His Meditations, as they are im |