i, Mme. D'Arblay, and a host of others, we see and peculiarities which Boswell either altogether r or traced with far too light a touch. In Johnson's gs, if we care to study them, we come upon many in which the author, while describing the character is at the same time describing his own. Tradition it was too late, came in with her delightful aid. memories of men who had visited at Bolt-court and m, or had enjoyed 'the manly conversation and the he brown table' of the Literary Club', was gathered Interesting anecdote of the grand old sage. The 1 these varied labours has not been in vain, for we Johnson as no other man is known to us. It is with ters of fiction alone that we have the same kind of d close intimacy. Our acquaintance with him is Dryden or Pope or Gibbon, but as with Falstaff Quixote, with Sir Roger de Coverley and my Uncle

›y the wonderful skill of the biographer that his life

"O! Gentlemen, I must tell you a very great thing. The Russia has ordered the Rambler to be translated into the lage; so I shall be read on the banks of the Wolga. Horace his fame would extend as far as the banks of the Rhone; lga is farther from me than the Rhone was from Horace." fe of Johnson, iv. 276. The report that the Rambler was o Russian was not well founded.

8 n. 4.

still

ever yet been made. No foreigners come to shrine of the rugged idol whom we have set up. mour, his strong common sense, his truthfulness, his tenderness, are known to us and us alone. deed right when he so often spoke of him as Englishman1. Of all Englishmen he was the -in his bad qualities as well as in his good, in as well as in his wisdom. The interest of the Boswell draws of him is heightened by the eedom from all insular narrowness. The young

s as far removed as possible from being

'A Scot if ever Scot there were?'

ustice he boasted that he was 'a very universal was as easy with Rousseau as he was with Paoli as he was with Jack Wilkes.

'I can

sted, 'I can laugh, I can converse in perfect Whigs, with Republicans, with Dissenters, with , with Quakers, with Moravians, with Jews".' ve been the last man to agree with 'Old Meynell claimed:- For anything I see foreigners are his Tour to the Hebrides, while he describes t bottom much of a John Bull, much of a blunt glishman, writing of himself he says:-'I am, self, completely a citizen of the world. In my

d it in a large degree. By means of it he saw the rasts in his hero's character, but he saw them ger or contempt, or even with mere toleration: being shocked by them, he had his interest all the

1.

n is marked off from all other men as the typical so is he distinguished from all other Englishmen, inence of the contradictory qualities' that were m. Horace Walpole describes him as 'the repreepitome of all the contradictions in human nature 1.' contradictions, however, he never exhibited those iations which trouble us in some of the greatest ne of his friends praising the originality of his In general you may tell what the man to whom aking will say next. This you can never do of Though you could never tell what Johnson would ill the greater questions of right or wrong every now what Johnson would do. Here there were gs, no strayings to one side or to the other. the strait gate, and here was the narrow path t. The gate he kept ever in view, and along path he doggedly plodded his way. Who has

the main of character heightens still more h exists in the minor parts. It not only it renders it far more pleasing.

king quality in Johnson was his wisdom, f the whole art of life. Gibbon describes ise of Thurlow 2? If common sense can be ested with majesty, it is seen in all its statee in the dictionary-maker than in the great But mere common sense would never have 11 that he is to us.

Benjamin Franklin had ense than the frame of any single man seems tining or supporting. But who loves common ands alone? It must be dashed by the failings affections with ourselves. It must at times be playful extravagances of a wayward humour. ed not with a cold and calculating selfishness, lerness and a pity for those whose want of it m to misery. No one understood better than by which we arrive at such happiness as life one felt more compassion for those who, irmity of will, failed to practise this art. It is nion of the strongest common sense and a of heart that more than anything else endears o are wide as the poles asunder. Macaulay did

Acconistes 1 TH2T

for ever.
He is wholly free from all
all moroseness, all peevishness. He

the savageness of Swift, as from the Carlyle. He never snarls and he never guilty of sullenness against nature1.' -py, it must be unhappy. But what of be done to make it happier, and that ch one of us steadily do. The worst own and whine. It is of small things it is in these small things, and in them such happiness as we are allowed here e would never have cried with Swift ould he have applauded a life of conifling. We are to attend to trifles, or _ccounted trifles, because it is of them, their multitude, that human existence

mountain, moments make the year,

5; 'he takes existence on the terms on 3. He never expects from life more He always refuses to hide from himself gs. He puts up no screen between

hnson's Dictionary under Sullenness.

ze, satire vi. hnson, iii. 58.

aling consequence crimes; we are n

himself

e never throws the ils of life. He will his reason. He be suspended

the thread of life
eat himself. The

constantly dwel
said, 'is but kee
Then he does think
to flatter his sou
itted was a matt
would have refuse
But that there is a he
ject of our terror,
denied. To the evil

Poverty he steadily
Crabbe's Village bed
nd rustic misery, bu

As truth wil

He dislikes all af great lexicogra

the

Morley's Life of Co
The Rambler, No.
Ibi