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This last of the Tories was Johnson: not the streets of manufacturing towns, and collect Burke, as is often said; Burke was essentially ragged losels enough; every one of whom, if a Whig, and only, on reaching the verge of the once dressed in red, and trained a little, will rechasm towards which Whiggism from the first ceive fire cheerfully for the small sum of one was inevitably leading, recoiled; and, like a man shilling per diem, and have the soul blown out vehement rather than earnest, a resplendent far- of him at last, with perfect propriety. The sighted Rhetorician rather than a deep sure Courage that dares only die, is on the whole no Thinker, recoiled with no measure, convul- sublime affair; necessary indeed, yet universively, and damaging what he drove back sal: pitiful when it begins to parade itself. On with him. this Globe of ours, there are some thirty-six persons that manifest it, seldom with the smallest failure, during every second of time. Nay look at Newgate: do not the offscourings of Creation, when condemned to the gallows, as if they were not men but vermin, walk thither with decency, and even to the scowls and hootings of the whole Universe give their stern goodnight in silence? What is to be undergone only once, we may undergo; what must be, comes almost of its own accord. Considered as Duelist, what a poor figure does the fiercest Irish Whiskerando make, compared with any English Game-cock, such as you may buy for fifteen-pence!

In a world which exists by the balance of Antagonisms, the respective merit of the Conservator and the Innovator must ever remain debateable. Great, in the meanwhile, and undoubted, for both sides, is the merit of him who, in a day of Change, walks wisely, honestly. Johnson's aim was in itself an impossible one; this of stemming the eternal Flood of Time; of clutching all things, and anchoring them down, and saying, Move not!-how could it, or should it, ever have success? The strongest man can but retard the current partially and for a short hour. Yet even in such shortest retardation, may not an estimable value lie? If England has escaped the blood-bath of a French Revolution; and may yet, in virtue of this delay and of the experience it has given, work out her deliverance calmly into a new Era, let Samuel Johnson, beyond all contemporary or succeeding men, have the praise for it. We said above that he was appointed to be Ruler of the British nation for a season: whoso will look beyond the surface, into the heart of the world's movements, may find that all Pitt Administrations, and Continental Subsidies, and Waterloo victories, rested on the possibility of making England, yet a little while, Toryish, Loyal to the Old; and this again on the anterior reality, that the Wise had found such Loyalty still practicable, and recommendable. England had its Hume, as France had its Voltaires and Diderots; but the Johnson was peculiar to us.

If we ask now by what endowment it mainly was that Johnson realized such a Life for himself and others; what quality of character the main phenomena of his Life may be most naturally deduced from, and his other qualities most naturally subordinated to, in our conception of him, perhaps the answer were: The quality of Courage, of Valour; that Johnson was a Brave Man. The Courage that can go forth, once and away, to Chalk-Farm, and have itself shot, and snuffed out, with decency, is nowise wholly what we mean here. Such Courage we indeed esteem an exceeding small matter; capable of coexisting with a life full of falsehood, feebleness, poltroonery, and despicability. Nay oftener it is Cowardice rather that produces the result: for consider, Is the ChalkFarm Pistoleer inspired with any reasonable Belief and Determination; or is he hounded on by haggard, indefinable Fear,-how he will be cut at public places, and "plucked geese of the neighbourhood" will wag their tongues at him a plucked goose? If he go then, and be shot without shrieking, or audible uproar, it is well for him: nevertheless there is nothing amazing in it. Courage to manage all this has not perhaps been denied to any man, or to any woman. Thus, do not recruiting sergeants drum through

The Courage we desire and prize is not the Courage to die decently, but to live manfully. This, when by God's grace it has been given, lies deep in the soul; like genial heat, fosters all other virtues and gifts; without it they could not live. In spite of our innumerable Waterloos and Peterloos, and such campaigning as there has been, this Courage we allude to, and call the only true one, is perhaps rarer in these last ages, than it has been in any other since the Saxon Invasion under Hengist. Altogether extinct it can never be among men; otherwise the species Man were no longer for this world: here and there, in all times, under various guises, men are sent hither not only to demonstrate but exhibit it, and testify, as from heart to heart, that it is still possible, still practicable.

Johnson, in the eighteenth century, and as Man of Letters, was one of such; and, in good truth," the bravest of the brave." What mortal could have more to war with? Yet, as we saw, he yielded not, faltered not; he fought, and even, such was his blessedness, prevailed. Whoso will understand what it is to have a man's heart, may find that, since the time of John Milton, no braver heart had beat in any English bosom than Samuel Johnson now bore. Observe too that he never called him. self brave, never felt himself to be so; the more completely was so. No Giant Despair, no Golgotha-Death-dance or Sorcerer's-Sabbath of "Literary Life in London," appals this pilgrim; he works resolutely for deliverance; in still defiance, steps stoutly along. The thing that is given him to do he can make himself do; what is to be endured he can endure in silence.

How the great soul of old Samuel, consuming daily his own bitter unalleviable allotment of misery and toil, shows beside the poor flimsy little soul of young Boswell; one day flaunting in the ring of vanity, tarrying by the wine-cup, and crying, Aha, the wine is red; the next day deploring his downpressed, night-shaded, quite poor estate; and thinking it unkind that the whole movement of the Universe should go on, while his digestive-apparatus had

stopped! We reckon Johnson's "talent of silence" to be among his great and too rare gifts. Where there is nothing farther to be done, there shall nothing farther be said: like his own poor blind Welshwoman, he accomplished somewhat, and also "endured fifty years of wretchedness with unshaken fortitude." How grim was Life to him; a sick Prison-house and Doubting-castle! "His great business," he would profess, "was to escape from himself." Yet towards all this he has taken his position and resolution; can dismiss it all" with frigid indifference, having little to hope or to fear." Friends are stupid and pusillanimous and parsimonious; "wearied of his stay, yet offended at his departure" it is the manner of the world. "By popular delusion," remarks he with a gigantic calmness, "illiterate writers will rise into renown:" it is portion of the History of English Literature; a perennial thing, this same popular delusion; and will-alter the character of the Language.

out, and examined with microscopes by friend and foe; yet was there no Lie found in him. His Doings and Writings are not shows but performances: you may weigh them in the balance, and they will stand weight. Not a line, not a sentence is dishonestly done, is other than it pretends to be. Alas! and he wrote not out of inward inspiration, but to earn his wages: and with that grand perennial tide of " popular delusion" flowing by; in whose waters he nevertheless refused to fish, to whose rich oyster-beds the dive was too muddy for him. Observe, again, with what innate hatred of Cant, he takes for himself, and offers to others the lowest possible view of his business, which he followed with such nobleness. Motive for writing he had none, as he often said, but money; and yet he wrote so. Into the region of Poetic Art he indeed never rose; there was no ideal without him avowing itself in his work: the nobler was that unavowed ideal which lay within him, and commanded, saying, Closely connected with this quality of Valour, Work out thy Artisanship in the spirit of an partly as springing from it, partly as protected Artist! They who talk loudest about the digby it, are the more recognisable qualities of nity of Art, and fancy that they too are Artistic Truthfulness in word and thought, and Hones- guild-brethren, and of the Celestials,-let them ty in action. There is a reciprocity of in- consider well what manner of man this was, fluence here for as the realizing of Truthful- who felt himself to be only a hired day-labourer. ness and Honesty is the Life-light and great A labourer that was worthy of his hire; that aim of Valour, so without Valour they cannot, has laboured not as an eye-servant, but as one in anywise, be realized. Now, in spite of all found faithful! Neither was Johnson in those practical shortcomings, no one that sees into days perhaps wholly a unique. Time was the significance of Johnson, will say that his when, for money, you might have ware: and prime object was not Truth. In conversation, needed not, in all departments, in that of the doubtless, you may observe him, on occasion, Epic Poem, in that of the Blacking Bottle, to fighting as if for victory;-and must pardon rest content with the mere persuasion that you these ebulliences of a careless hour, which had ware. It was a happier time. But as yet were not without temptation and provocation. the seventh Apocalyptic Bladder (of PUFFERY) Remark likewise two things; that such prize- had not been rent open,-to whirl and grind, as arguings were ever on merely superficial debat-in a West-Indian Tornado, all earthly trades able questions; and then that they were argued and things into wreck, and dust, and consumgenerally by the fair laws of battle, and mation, and regeneration. Be it quickly, since logic-fence, by one cunning in that same. If it must be !their purpose was excusable, their effect was harmless, perhaps beneficial: that of taming noisy mediocrity, and showing it another side of a debatable matter; to see both sides of which was, for the first time, to see the Truth of it. In his Writings themselves, are errors enough, crabbed prepossessions enough, yet these also of a quite extraneous and accidental nature; nowhere a wilful shutting of the eyes to the Truth. Nay, is there not everywhere a heartfelt discernment, singular, almost admirable, if we consider through what confused conflicting lights and hallucinations it had to be attained, of the highest everlasting Truth, | and beginning of all Truths: this, namely, that man is ever, and even in the age of Wilkes and Whitfield, a Revelation of God to man; and lives, moves, and has his being în Truth | only; is either true, or, in strict speech, is not at all?

Quite spotless, on the other hand, is Johnson's love of Truth, if we look at it as expressed in Practice, as what we have named Honesty of action. "Clear your mind of Cant;" clear it, throw Cant utterly away: such was his emphatic, repeated precept; and did not he himself faithfully conform to it? The Life of this man has been, as it were, turned inside

That Mercy can dwell only with Valour, is an old sentiment or proposition; which, in Johnson, again receives confirmation. Few men on record have had a more merciful, tenderly affectionate nature than old Samuel. He was called the Bear; and did indeed too often look, and roar, like one; being forced to it in his own defence: yet within that shaggy exterior of his, there beat a heart warm as a mother's, soft as a little child's. Nay generally, his very roaring was but the anger of affection: the rage of a Bear, if you will; but of a Bear bereaved of her whelps. Touch his Religion, glance at the Church of England, or the Divine Right; and he was upon you! These things were his Symbols of all that was good, and precious for men; his very Ark of the Covenant: whoso laid hand on them tore asunder his heart of hearts. Not out of hatred to the opponent, but of love to the thing opposed, did Johnson grow cruel, fiercely contradictory: this is an important distinction; never to be forgotten in our censure of his conversational outrages. But observe also with what humanity, what openness of love, he can attach himself to all things: to a blind old woman, to a Doctor Levett, to a Cat "Hodge." "His thoughts in the latter part of his life were

great emotion of tenderness, the same hopes. We kissed and parted; I humbly hope, to meet again, and to part no more."

Tears trickling down the granite rock: a soft swell of Pity springs within! Still more tragical is this other scene: "Johnson mentioned that he could not in general accuse himself of having been an undutiful son. "Once indeed," said he, "I was disobedient: I refused to attend my father to Uttoxeter market. Pride was the source of that refusal, and the remembrance of it was painful. A few years ago I desired to atone for this fault."— But by what method?-What method was now possible? Hear it; the words are again given as his own, though here evidently by a less capable reporter:

"Madam, I beg your pardon for the abruptness of my departure in the morning, but I was compelled to do it by conscience. Fifty years ago, Madam, on this day, I committed a breach of filial piety. My father had been in the habit of attending Uttoxeter market, and opening a stall there for the sale of his Books. Confined by indisposition, he desired me, that

frequently employed on his deceased friends; he often muttered these or such-like sentences: "Poor man! and then he died." How he patiently converts his poor home into a Lazaretto; endures, for long years, the contradiction of the miserable and unreasonable; with him unconnected, save that they had no other to yield them refuge! Generous old man! Worldly possession he has little; yet of this he gives freely; from his own hard-earned shilling, the half-pence for the poor, that "waited his coming out," are not withheld: the poor "waited the coming out" of one not quite so poor! A Sterne can write sentimentalities on Dead Asses: Johnson has a rough voice; but he finds the wretched Daughter of Vice fallen down in the streets; carries her home, on his own shoulders, and like a good Samaritan, gives help to the help-needing, worthy or unworthy. Ought not Charity, even in that sense, to cover a multitude of Sins? No Penny-a-week Committee-Lady, no manager of Soup-Kitchens, dancer at Charity Balls, was this rugged, stern-visaged man: but where, in all England, could there have been found another soul so full of Pity, a hand so heaven-day, to go and attend the stall in his place. like bounteous as his? The widow's mite, we My pride prevented me; I gave my father a know, was greater than all the other gifts. refusal.-And now to-day I have been at UtPerhaps it is this divine feeling of Affection, toxeter; I went into the market, at the time of throughout manifested, that principally attracts business, uncovered my head, and stood with us towards Johnson. A true brother of men it bare, for an hour, on the spot where my is he; and filial lover of the Earth; who, with father's stall used to stand. In contrition I little bright spots of Attachment," where lives stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory." and works some loved one," has beautified Who does not figure to himself this specta"this rough solitary Earth into a peopled gar-cle, amid the “rainy weather, and the sneers," den." Litchfield, with its mostly dull and or wonder, "of the by-standers?" The melimited inhabitants, is to the last one of the sunny islets for him: Salve magna parens! Or read those Letters on his Mother's death: what a genuine solemn grief and pity lies recorded there; a looking back into the Past, unspeakably mournful, unspeakably tender. And yet calm, sublime; for he must now act, not look: his venerated Mother has been taken from him; but he must now write a Rasselas to defray her interment! Again in this little incident, recorded in his Book of Devotion, are not the tones of sacred Sorrow and Greatness deeper than in many a blank-verse Tragedy; as, indeed, "the fifth act of a Tragedy" (though unrhymed) does "lie in every death-bed, were it a peasant's, and of straw:"

mory of old Michael Johnson, rising from the far distance; sad-beckoning in the "moonlight of memory:" how he had toiled faithfully hither and thither; patiently among the lowest of the low; been buffetted and beaten down, yet ever risen again, ever tried it anew-And oh! when the wearied old man, as Bookseller, or Hawker, or Tinker, or whatsoever it was that Fate had reduced him to, begged help of thee for one day,-how savage, diabolic, was that mean Vanity, which answered, No! He sleeps now; after life's fitful fever, he sleeps: but thou, O Merciless, how now wilt thou still the sting of that remembrance?—The picture of Samuel Johnson standing bareheaded in the market there, is one of the grandest and saddest "Sunday, October 18, 1767. Yesterday, at we can paint. "Repentance! Repentance!" about ten in the morning, I took my leave for he proclaims, as with passionate sobs:-but ever of my dear old friend, Catherine Cham-only to the ear of Heaven, if Heaven will give bers, who came to live with my mother about him audience: the earthly ear, and heart, that 1724, and has been but little parted from us should have heard it, are now closed, unresince. She buried my father, my brother, and sponsive for ever. my mother. She is now fifty-eight years old. That this so keen-loving, soft-trembling "I desired all to withdraw; then told her Affectionateness, the inmost essence of his that we were to part for ever; that as Chris-being, must have looked forth, in one form or tians, we should part with prayer; and that I would, if she was willing, say a short prayer beside her. She expressed great desire to hear me; and held up her poor hands as she lay in bed, with great fervour, while I prayed kneeling by her.

another, through Johnson's whole character, practical and intellectual, modifying both, is not to be doubted. Yet through what singular distortions and superstitions, moping melancholies, blind habits, whims about "entering with the right foot," and "touching every post "I then kissed her. She told me that to part as he walked along;" and all the other mad was the greatest pain she had ever felt, and chaotic lumber of a brain that, with sun-clear that she hoped we should meet again in a bet-intellect, hovered for ever on the verge of inter place. I expressed with swelled eyes, and sanity,-must that same inmost essence have

truth and living vigour must such Institutions | deed, that they were earnest men, and had subonce have had, when, in the middle of the Eighteenth century, there was still enough left in them for this!

dued their wild world into a kind of temporary home, and safe dwelling. Both were, by principle and habit, Stoics: yet Johnson with the greater merit, for he alone had very much to triumph over; farther, he alone ennobled his Stoicism into Devotion. To Johnson Life was as a Prison, to be endured with heroic faith: to Hume it was little more than a foolish Bartholomew-Fair Show-booth, with the foolish crowdings and elbowings of which it was not worth while to quarrel; the whole would break up, and be at liberty, so soon. Both realized the highest task of Manhood, that of living like men; each died not unfitly, in his way: Hume as one, with factitious, half-false gayety, taking leave of what was itself wholly but a Lie: Johnson as one, with awe-struck, yet resolute and piously expectant heart, taking leave of a Reality, to enter a Reality still higher. Johnson had the harder problem of it, from first to last: whether, with some hesitation, we can admit that he was intrinsically the better-gifted,

It is worthy of note that, in our little British Isle, the two grand Antagonisms of Europe should have stood imbodied, under their very highest concentration, in two men produced simultaneously among ourselves. Samuel Johnson and David Hume, as was observed, were children of the same year: through life they were spectators of the same Life-movement; often inhabitants of the same city. Greater contrast, in all things, between two great men, could not be. Hume, well-born, competently provided for, whole in body and mind, of his own determination forces a way into Literature: Johnson, poor, moonstruck, diseased, forlorn, is forced into it "with the bayonet of necessity at his 'back." And what a part did they severally play there! As Johnson became the father of all succeeding Tories; so was Hume the father of all succeeding Whigs, for his own Jacobitism was but an-may remain undecided. accident, as worthy to be named Prejudice as These two men now rest; the one in Westany of Johnson's. Again, if Johnson's culture minster Abbey here; the other in the Calton was exclusively English; Hume's, in Scotland, Hill Churchyard of Edinburgh. Through Life became European;-for which reason too we they did not meet: as contrasts, "like in unfind his influence spread deeply over all quar-like," love each other; so might they two have ters of Europe, traceable deeply in all speculation, French, German, as well as domestic; while Johnson's name, out of England, is hardly anywhere to be met with. In spiritual stature they are almost equal; both great, among the greatest: yet how unlike in likeness! Hume has the widest methodizing, comprehensive eye; Johnson the keenest for perspicacity and minute detail: so had, perhaps chiefly, their education ordered it. Neither of the two rose into Poetry; yet both to some approximation thereof: Hume to something of an Epic clearness and method, as in his delineation of the Commonwealth Wars; Johnson to many a deep Lyric tone of plaintiveness, and impetuous graceful power, scattered over his fugitive compositions. Both, rather to the general surprise, had a certain rugged Humour shining through their earnestness: the indication, in

loved, and communed kindly,-had not the terrestrial dross and darkness, that was in them, withstood! One day their spirits, what truth was in each, will be found working, living in harmony and free union, even here below. They were the two half-men of their time: whoso should combine the intrepid Candour, and decisive scientific Clearness of Hume, with the Reverence, the Love, and devout Humility of Johnson, were the whole man of a new time. Till such whole man arrive for us, and the distracted time admit of such, might the heavens but bless poor England with half-men worthy to tie the shoelatchets of these, resembling these even from afar! Be both attentively regarded, let the true Effort of both prosper;-and for the present, both take our affectionate farewell!

DEATH OF GOETHE.

[NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, 1832.]

In the obituary of these days stands one | A beautiful death; like that of a soldier found article of quite peculiar import; the time, the faithful at his post, and in the cold hand his place, and particulars of which will have to arms still grasped! The Poet's last words are be often repeated, and re-written, and continue a greeting of the new-awakened earth; his in remembrance many centuries: this, namely, last movement is to work at his appointed that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died at task. Beautiful: what we might call a ClasWeimar, on the 22d March, 1832. It was sic, sacred death; if it were not rather an about eleven in the morning; "he expired,” | Elijah-translation,-in a chariot, not of fire says the record, "without any apparent suffering, having a few minutes previously, called for paper for the purpose of writing, and expressed his delight at the arrival of spring."

and terror, but of hope and soft vernal sunbeams! It was at Frankfort on the Mayn, on the 28th of August, 1749, that this man entered the world-and now, gently welcoming the