To chase the charms of sound, the pomp of show,
For useful mirth and solitary woe,

Bid scenic Virtue form the rising age,

And Truth diffuse her radiance for the stage.

The poetry of Johnson, whatever may be its merit, forms but a very small portion of the history of his mind, or of his works. His great literary efforts were all made in prose, and these will ever remain a monument of his fame, as firm and as lasting as the language in which they are written. On the twentieth of March, 1750, he published the first number of a periodical paper, under the title of The Rambler, and continued to issue it semi-weekly until the fourteenth of March, 1752. It is a remarkable feature of this great undertaking, that during the whole period through which it passed, only four of the numbers were written by other authors. Johnson afterwards collected these essays, and before their publication in a permanent form, he revised and corrected them with great care. Their style is lofty and measured, and though somewhat turgid, abounds in the beautiful, and often attains even to the grand. His imagery is striking and original, and his inculcation of moral and religious duty, earnest and impressive. Goldsmith declared that a complete system of morals might be drawn from them. In 1758, he began the publication of The Idler, a periodical similar to the 'The Rambler,' and of the same duration. While engaged in conducting this work he lost his mother, and in order to be able to meet the expenses attending her funeral, he wrote, in the incredibly brief space of a week, Rassalas, his only novel. For this fiction a bookseller paid him a hundred pounds.

Johnson had, at this time, passed the fiftieth year of his age, and hitherto his great literary labors had barely afforded him a decent subsistence. But now the scene was changed. He received the honorary degree of doctor of laws, first from Trinity College, Dublin, and afterwards from the university of Oxford; and, in 1762, the king settled an annual unconditional pension on him of three hundred pounds. In 1765, appeared his edition of Shakspeare; containing little, however, that is valuable in the way of annotation, but introduced by a masterly preface. In 1775, he published his Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, and, in 1781, his Lives of the Poets. It was the felicity of this remarkable author to improve as he advanced in years, and to write best after he had passed that period of life when most men are incapable of intellectual exertion. The 'Lives of the Poets' have a freedom of style, a vigor of thought and a happiness of illustration, rarely attained even by their author. The plan of the work is defective, as the lives extend no farther back than Cowley, thus excluding all the previous poets from Chaucer downwards. Some feeble and worthless rhymesters also obtained niches in Johnson's gallery; but the most serious defect of the whole is the injustice done to some of our greatest masters of song, in consequence of the political or personal prejudices of the author. To Milton he is strikingly unjust, though his criticism, on 'Paradise Lost,' is able and profound. Gray, VOL. II.-20

too, is treated with a coarseness and insensibility, derogatory only to the critic; and in general the higher order of imaginative poetry suffers under his ponderous hand. Its beauties were too airy and ethical for his grasp— too subtle for his feelings or understanding.

Soon after Dr. Johnson had completed his 'Lives of the Poets,' his health, from the united attacks of dropsy and asthma, began to decline; and during the progressive increase of his complaints he divided his time between acts of devotion and classical recreations. It is remarkable that a man whose pen had ever been employed in recommending piety, and all the offices of the purest morality, and whose conduct and example through life had uniformly exhibited the most perfect pattern of Christian virtues, should, at the approach of death, be filled with dreadful apprehensions concerning his future state. By degrees, however, the terrors which his imagination had created, disappeared; and he expired on the thirteenth of December, 1784, full of resignation, strong in faith, and in the joyful hope of a happy resurrection.

The following brief extracts will close our view of this great and interesting author:

ON USEFUL KNOWLEDGE.

To lessen that disdain with which scholars are inclined to look on the common business of the world, and the unwillingness with which they condescend to learn what is not to be found in any system of philosophy, it may be necessary to consider that, though admiration is excited by abstruse researches and remote discoveries, yet pleasure is not given, nor affection conciliated, but by softer accomplishments, and qualities more easily communicable to those about us. He that can only converse upon questions about which only a small part of mankind has knowledge sufficient to make them curious, must lose his days in unsocial silence, and live in the crowd of life without a companion. He that can only be useful on great occasions, may die without exercising his abilities, and stand a helpless spectator of a thousand vexations which fret away happiness, and which nothing is required to remove but a little dexterity of conduct and readiness of expedients.

No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance, or to extinguish the desire of fond endearments and tender of ficiousness; and, therefore, no one should think it unnecessary to learn those arts by which friendship may be gained. Kindness is preserved by a constant reciprocation of benefits, or interchange of pleasures; but such benefits only can be bestowed as others are capable to receive, and such pleasures only imparted as others are qualified to enjoy. By this descent from the pinnacles of art, no honour will be lost: for the condescensions of learning are always overpaid by gratitude. An elevated genius employed in little things, appears, to use the simile of Longinus, like the sun in his evening declinations; he remits his splendour, but retains his magnitude, and pleases more though he dazzles less.

ON REVENGE.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain. He that willingly suffers the corrosions of inveterate hatred, and gives up his days and nights to the gloom and malice and perturbations of stratagem, can not surely be said to consult his ease. Resentment is a union of sorrow with malignity; a combination of a

passion which all endeavour to avoid, with a passion which all concur to detest. The man who retires to meditate mischief, and to exasperate his own rage; whose thoughts are employed only on means of distress and contrivances of ruin; whose mind never pauses from the remembrance of his own sufferings, but to indulge some hope of enjoying the calamities of another, may justly be numbered among the most miserable of human beings, among those who are guilty without reward, who have neither the gladness of prosperity, nor the calm of innocence. Whoever considers the weakness both of himself and others will not long want persuasives to forgiveness. We know not to what degree of malignity any injury is to be imputed; or how much its guilt, if we were to inspect the mind of him that committed it, would be extenuated by mistake, precipitance or negligence; we can not be certain how much more we feel than was intended to be inflicted, or how much we increase the mischief to ourselves by voluntary aggravations. We may charge to design the effects of accident; we may think the blow violent only because we have made ourselves delicate and tender; we are on every side in danger of error and of guilt, which we are certain to avoid only by speedy forgiveness. From this pacific and harmless temper, thus propitious to others and ourselves, to domestic tranquillity and to social happiness, no man is withheld but by pride, by the fear of being insulted by his adversary, or despised by the world. It may be laid down as an unfailing and universal axiom,' that all pride is abject and mean.' It is always an ignorant, lazy, or cowardly acquiescence in a false appearance of excellence, and proceeds not from consciousness of our attainments, but insensibility of our wants. Nothing can be great which is not right. Nothing which reason condemns can be suitable to the dignity of the human mind. To be driven by external motives from the path which our own heart approves, to give way to any thing but conviction, to suffer the opinion of others to rule our choice, or overpower our resolves, is to submit tamely to the lowest and most ignominious slavery, and to resign the right of directing our own lives.

The utmost excellence at which humanity can arrive, is a constant and determinate pursuit of virtue without regard to present dangers or advantages; a continual reference of every action to the divine will; a habitual appeal to everlasting justice; and an unvaried elevation of the intellectual eye to the reward which perseverance only can obtain. But that pride which many, who presume to boast of generous sentiments, allow to regulate their measures, has nothing nobler in view than the approbation of men; of beings whose superiority we are under no obligation to acknowledge, and who, when we have courted them with the utmost assiduity, can confer no valuable or permanent reward; of beings who ignorantly judge of what they do not understand, or partially determine what they have never examined; and whose sentence is, therefore, of no weight, till it has received the ratification of our own conscience. He that can descend to bribe suffrages like these at the price of his innocence; he that can suffer the delight of such acclamations to withhold his attention from the commands of the universal sovereign, has little reason to congratulate himself upon the greatness of his mind; whenever he awakes to seriousness and reflection, he must become despicable in his own eyes, and shrink with shame from the remembrance of his cowardice and folly.

Of him that hopes to be forgiven, it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is therefore superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended; and to him that refuses to practice it the throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Saviour of the world has been born in vain.'

A still finer specimen of Johnson's style is afforded in an essay on retirement from the world:

'On him,' says the moralist, 'that appears to pass through things temporal with no other care than not to lose finally the things eternal, I look with such veneration as

inclines me to approve his conduct in the whole, without a minute examination of its parts; yet I could never forbear to wish, that while vice is every day multiplying seducements and stalking forth with more hardened effrontery, virtue would not withdraw the influence of her presence, or forbear to assert her natural dignity by open and undaunted perseverance in the right. Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those embodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and, however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendour of beneficence.'

PARALLEL BETWEEN POPE AND DRYDEN.

Pope professed to have learned his poetry from Dryden, whom, whenever an opportunity was presented, he praised through his whole life with unvaried liberality; and perhaps his character may receive some illustration, if he be compared with his master. Integrity of understanding and nicety of discernment were not allotted in a less proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude of Dryden's mind was sufficiently shown by the dismission of his poetical prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural thoughts and rugged numbers. But Dryden never desired to apply all the judgment that he had. He wrote, and professed to write, merely for the people; and when he pleased others he contented himself. He spent no time in struggles to rouse latent powers; he never attempted to make that better which was already good, nor often to mend what he must have known to be faulty. He wrote, as he tells us, with very little consideration; when occasion or necessity called upon him, he poured out what the present moment happened to supply, and, when once it had passed the press, ejected it from his mind; for when he had no pecuniary interest, he had no further solicitude.

Pope was not content to satisfy: he desired to excel, and therefore always endeavoured to do his best: he did not court the candour, but dared the judgment of his readers, and expecting no indulgence from others, he showed none to himself. He examined lines and words with minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be forgiven.

For this reason he kept his pieces very long in his hands, while he considered and reconsidered them. The only poems which can be supposed to have been written with such regard to the times as might hasten their publication, were the two satires of 'Thirty-eight,' of which Dodsley told me that they were brought to him by the author that they might be fairly copied. Almost every line,' he said, 'was then written twice over; I gave him a clean transcript, which he sent some time afterwards to me for the press, with almost every line written over a second time.'

His declaration, that his care for his works ceased at their publication, was not strictly true. His parental attention never abandoned them; what he found amiss in the first edition, he silently corrected in those that followed. He appears to have revised the 'Iliad,' and freed it from some of its imperfections; and the 'Essay on Criticism' received many improvements after its first appearance. It will seldom be found that he altered without adding clearness, elegance, or vigour.

Pope had perhaps the judgment of Dryden, but Dryden certainly wanted the diligence of Pope. In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be allowed to Dryden, whose education was more scholastic, and who, before he became an author, had been allowed more time for study, with better means of information. His mind has a larger range, and he collects his images and illustrations, from a more extensive circumference of science. Dryden knew more of man in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty in that of Pope.

Poetry was not the sole praise of either; for both excelled likewise in prose; but

Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The style of Dryden is capricious and varied, that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind, Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid, Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural field rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation, Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled by the roller.

of genius, that power which constitutes a poet, that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert, that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates, the superiority must with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred that of his poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more; for every other writer since Milton must give place to Pope; and even of Dryden it must be said, that if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not better poems. Dryden's performances were always hasty, either excited by some external occasion, or extorted by some domestic necessity; he composed without consideration, and published without correction. What his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all that study might produce or chance might supply. If the flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden's fires the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight.

This parallel will, I hope, when it is well considered, be found just; and if the reader should suspect me, as I suspect myself, of some partial fondness for the memory of Dryden, let him not too hastily condemn me, for meditation and inquiry may, perhaps, show him the reasonableness of my determination.

REFLECTIONS ON LANDING AT IONA.

We were now treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. The man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force on the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.

JAMES HARRIS, a learned and benevolent contemporary of Dr. Johnson, and a co-worker with him in the field of useful knowledge, was born at Salisbury, in 1709. From the grammar-school of his native place he entered Wadham College, Oxford, but left the university without taking a degree. Harris was a man of rank and fortune: he sat several years in parliament, and was successively a lord of the admiralty, and lord of the treasury. In 1774 he was made secretary and comptroller to the queen, a situation which he held till his death, December the twenty-third, 1780.

Though an eminent statesman, Harris still found time to devote much attention to literature. In 1744, he published treatises on art, on music and painting, and on happiness. These productions were, however, the