tempting one. Pursuing the track of his author, he expatiates on the miferies that await empire, grandeur, wealth, and power, and the disappointments that fruftrate the hopes of ambition, learning, eloquence, and beauty; in all which inftances he has been able to point out examples the most striking and appofite.

The poem concludes with an anfwer to an enquiry that must neceffarily refult from the perufal of the foregoing part of it, viz. what are the confolations that human life affords? or, in other words, in whom or on what is a virtuous man to reft his hope? the refolution of this question is contained in the following lines, which for dignity of fentiment, for pious instruction, and purity of style, are hardly to be equalled by any in our language.

Where then shall hope and fear their objects find? • Muft dull fufpenfe corrupt the stagnant mind? Must helpless man, in ignorance fedate,

• Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate? • Muft no diflike alarm, no wishes rife,

• No cries invoke the genius of the skies? Enquirer, cease, petitions yet remain,

'Which Heav'n may hear, nor deem religion vain. • Still raise for good the fupplicating voice,

But leave to Heav'n the measure and the choice.
Safe in his pow'r, whofe eyes difcern afar

• The fecret ambush of a specious pray'r ;
Implore his aid, in his decifions reft,
'Secure, whate'er he gives, he gives the best.
Yet when the fenfe of facred presence fires,
And strong devotion to the skies afpires,

• Pour

Pour forth thy fervours for a healthful mind, • Obedient paffions, and a will refign'd;

For love, which scarce collective man can fill; For patience, fov'reign o'er tranfimuted ill; For faith, that panting for a happier seat, 'Counts death kind nature's fignal of retreat. 'Thefe goods for man, the laws of Heav'n ordain; These goods he grants, who grants the pow'r to gain; With thefe celestial wisdom calms the mind, And makes the happiness she does not find.'

In the following year, it having been difcovered, that a grand-daughter of Milton was living, Mr. Garrick was prevailed on to permit the reprefentation of the Mafque of Comus at his theatre, for her benefit. Upon this occafion, Johnson, forgetting the enmity which he had always borne towards Milton, wrote a prologue, wherein he calls the attention of the audience to his memory, and without imputing to his defcendant any other merit than industrious poverty and conjugal fidelity, implores them to crown defert beyond the grave.

Johnfon's beneficence was of the moft diffufive kind: Diftrefs was the general motive, and merit, whether in the object or any to whom he claimed relation, the particular incentive to it. There was living at this time, a man of the name of De Groot, a painter by profeffion, and no contemptible artist, who, after having travelled over England, and at low prices painted as many perfons as could be perfuaded to fit to him, fettled in London, and became reduced to poverty: him Oldys, or fome one other of his friends, introduced to Johnson, who found out

by

by his converfation that he was a defcendant of Grotius; and thereupon exerting his intereft in his behalf, he procured for him an admiffion into the Charterhouse, in which comfortable retreat he died.

Johnson was all this while working at the dictionary, having to affift him a number of young perfons whofe employment it was to diftribute the articles with fufficient spaces for the definitions, which iť is easy to difcern are of his own compofition.

Of these his aflistants, fome were young men of parts, others mere drudges. Among the former was one of the name of Shiells, a Scotchman, the author of a poem in blank verse, intitled 'Beauty,' and also of a collection of the lives of the poets, in four volumes, which, for a gratuity of ten guineas, Theophilus Cibber fuffered to be printed with his name, a book of no authority other than what it derives from Winftanley, Langbaine, and Jacob, and in other respects of little worth; but concerning which it is fit that the following fact fhould be made known: Cibber at the time of making this bargain, was under confinement for debt in the king's-bench prifon, and with a view to deceive the public into a belief that the book was of his father's writing, it was concerted between the negotiators of it and himself to fupprefs his chriftian name, and that it fhould be printed as a work of Mr. Cibber.

The intense application with which he was obliged to purfue his work, deprived Johnson of many of the pleasures he most delighted in, as namely, reading in his defultory manner, and the converfation of his friends. It also increased his conftitutional melancholy, and at times excited in him a loathing of that employment

employment to which he could not but look upon himself as doomed by his neceffities. The fum for which he had ftipulated with the bookfellers, was by the terms of the agreement, to be paid as the work went on, and was indeed his only fupport. Being thus compelled to spend every day like the past, hẻ looked on himself as in a state of mental bondage, and reflecting that while he was thus employed, his best faculties lay dormant, was unwillingly willing to work.

And here we cannot but reflect on that inertnefs and laxity of mind which the neglect of order and regularity in living, and the obfervance of stated hours, in short, the waste of time, is apt to lead men to this was the fource of Johnson's mifery throughout his life; all he did was by fits and starts, and he had no genuine impulfe to action, either corporal or mental. That the compilation of fuch a work as he was engaged in, was neceffarily productive of that languor, which, in the profecution of it he manifefted, is by no means clear: all employments, all occupations whatever, are intrinfically indifferent, and excite neither pain nor pleasure, but as the mind is dif posed towards them. Fame, mere pofthumous fame has engaged men to fimilar undertakings, and they have pursued them with zeal and even delight. Canne, the editor of a bible printed in 1664, spent many years in collecting parallel paffages in the Old and New Testament, to fuch a number as to croud the margin of the book, and in the preface thereto he declares, that it was the most delightful employment of his life; and what but a real pleafure in that kind of labour,

and

and the confideration of its benefit to mankind, could be the inducement with fuch a man as Hoffman to compile a lexicon more than twice as voluminous as that of Johnson?

And, to speak more at large, viz. of men who have benefited the world by their literary labours, avowing as their motive the defire of gain, we find not all infected with that difeafe, which as it affected Johnfon, may almoft be faid to have converted all his mental nutriment to poifon on the contrary, there have been many who mixed with the world, and by a good ufe of their time, were capable of great application and enjoying the benefits of fociety; and of these I shall mention three perfons, his contemporaries, men of very different characters from each other; all authors by profeffion, and of great eminence in literature.

The firft was the reverend Dr. Thomas Birch, a divine of the church of England, but originally a quaker. In his youth he was paffionately fond of reading, and being indulged in it by his father, became fucceffively ufher to two fchools in which the fons of quakers were educated. He married at the age of twenty-three; but in less than a year became a widower. Having had the happiness of a recommendation to Sir Philip Yorke, then attorney-general, and being honoured with his favour and patronage, he, in 1730, entered into holy orders, and was prefented to a rectory and alfo to a vicarage in Gloucefterfhire. Soon after this, in conjunction with the reverend Mr. Bernard, the well-known Mr. John Lockman, and Mr. George Sale the tranflator of the

Koran,