very deed and truth, like that baseless fabric | and what it was; whence it proceeded, whither of Prospero's air-vision. Of the Mitre Tavern it was tending. nothing but the bare walls remain there: of Mournful, in truth, is it to behold what the London, of England, of the World, nothing but business called "History," in these so enlightthe bare walls remain; and these also decay-ened and illuminated times, still continues to ing, (were they of adamant,) only slower. The be. Can you gather from it, read till your mysterious River of Existence rushes on: a eyes go out, any dimmest shadow of an annew Billow thereof has arrived, and lashes swer to that great question: How men lived wildly as ever round the old embankments; and had their being; were it but economically, but the former Billow with its loud, mad eddy- as what wages they got, and what they bought ings, where is it?-Where!-Now this Book with these? Unhappily you cannot. History of Boswell's, this is precisely a Revocation of will throw no light on any such matter. the Edict of Destiny; so that Time shall not the point where living memory fails, it is all utterly, not so soon by several centuries, have darkness; Mr. Senior and Mr. Sadler must dominion over us. A little row of Naphtha- still debate this simplest of all elements in the lamps, with its line of Naphtha-light, burns condition of the past: Whether men were betclear and holy through the dead Night of the ter off, in their mere larders and pantries, or Past: they who are gone are still here; though were worse off than now! History, as it stands hidden they are revealed, though dead they yet all bound up in gilt volumes, is but a shade speak. There it shines, that little miraculously more instructive than the wooden volumes of lamp-lit Pathway; shedding its feebler and a Backgammon-board. How my Prime Minisfeebler twilight into the boundless dark Ob-ter was appointed is of less moment to me livion, for all that our Johnson touched has than How my House Servant was hired. In become illuminated for us: on which miracu- these days, ten ordinary Histories of Kings lous little Pathway we can still travel, and see and Courtiers were well exchanged against wonders. the tenth part of one good History of Booksellers.

It is not speaking with exaggeration, but with strict measured sobriety, to say that this For example, I would fain know the HisBook of Boswell's will give us more real in- tory of Scotland; who can tell it me? "Rosight into the History of England during those bertson," cry innumerable voices; “Robertson days than twenty other Books, falsely entitled against the world." I open Robertson; and "Histories," which take to themselves that find there, through long ages too confused for special aim. What good is it to me though narrative, and fit only to be presented in the innumerable Smolletts and Belshams keep way of epitome and distilled essence, a cundinning in my ears that a man named George ning answer and hypothesis, not to this questhe Third was born and bred up, and a man tion: By whom, and by what means, when named George the Second died; that Walpole, and how, was this fair broad Scotland, with and the Pelhams, and Chatham, and Rocking-its Arts and Manufactures, Temples, Schools, ham, and Shelburne, and North, with their Institutions, Poetry, Spirit, National CharacCoalition or their Separation Ministries, allter, created and made arable, verdant, pecuousted one another; and vehemently scrambled for "the thing they called the Rudder of Government, but which was in reality the Spigot of Taxation?" That debates were held, and infinite jarring and jargoning took place; and road-bills and enclosure-bills, and game-bills and India-bills, and Laws which no man can number, which happily few men needed to trouble their heads with beyond the passing moment, were enacted, and printed by the King's Stationer? That he who sat in Chancery, and rayed out speculation from the Woolsack, was now a man that squinted, now a man that did not squint? To the hungry and thirsty mind all this avails next to nothing. These men and these things, we indeed know, did swim, by strength or by specific levity, (as apples or as horse-dung,) on the top of the current: but is it by painfully noting the courses, eddyings, and bobbings hither and thither of such drift-articles, that you will unfold to me the nature of the current itself; of that mighty-rolling, loud-roaring, Life-current, bottomless as the foundations of the Universe, mysterious as its Author? The thing I want to see is not Redbook Lists, and Court Calendars, and Parliamentary Registers, but the LIFE OF MAN in England: what men did, thought, suffered, enjoyed; the form, especially the spirit, of their terrestrial existence, its outward environment, its inward principle; how

liar, great, here as I can see some fair section of it lying, kind and strong, (like some Bacchus-tamed Lion,) from the Castle-hill of Edinburgh ?—but to this other question: How did the King keep himself alive in these old days; and restrain so many Butcher-Barons and ravenous Henchmen from utterly extirpating one another, so that killing went on in some sort of moderation? In the one little Letter of Eneas Sylvius, from old Scotland, there is more of History than in all this.-At length, however, we come to a luminous age, interesting enough; to the age of the Reformation. All Scotland is awakened to a second higher life: the Spirit of the highest stirs in every bosom, agitates every bosom; Scotland is convulsed, fermenting, struggling to body itself forth anew. To the herdsman among his cattle in remote woods; to the craftsman, in his rude, heath-thatched workshop, among his rude guild-brethren; to the great and to the little, a new light has arisen: in town and hamlet groups are gathered, with eloquent looks, and governed or ungovernable tongues; the great and the little go forth together to do battle for the Lord against the mighty. We ask, with breathless eagerness: How was it; how went it on? Let us understand it, let us see it, and know it! In reply, is handed us a really graceful, and most dainty little Scanda lous Chronicle (as for some Journal of Fash·

ion) of two persons: Mary Stuart, a Beauty, | insincere speech with which the thought of manbut over lightheaded; and Henry Darnley, a kind is well nigh drowned,-were it other than Booby, who had fine legs. How these first the most indubitable benefit? He who speaks courted, billed and cooed, according to nature; honestly cares not, needs not care, though his then pouted, fretted, grew utterly enraged, and words be preserved to remotest time: for him blew one another up with gunpowder: this, who speaks dishonestly, the fittest of all punishand not the History of Scotland, is what we ments seems to be this same, which the nagoodnaturedly read. Nay, by other hands, ture of the case provides. The dishonest something like a horseload of other Books speaker, not he only who purposely utters have been written to prove that it was the falsehoods, but he who does not purposely, Beauty who blew up the Booby, and that it was and with sincere heart, utter Truth, and Truth not she. Who or what it was, the thing once alone; who babbles he knows not what, and for all being so effectually done, concerns us has clapped no bridle on his tongue, but lets it little. To know Scotland, at that great epoch, run racket, ejecting chatter and futility-is were a valuable increase of knowledge: to among the most indubitable malefactors omit know poor Darnley and see him with burning ted, or inserted, in the Criminal Calendar. candle, from centre to skin, were no increase To him that will well consider i1, idle speakof knowledge at all. Thus is History written. ing is precisely the beginning of all HollowHence, indeed, comes it that History, which ness, Halfness, Infidely, (want of Faithful should be "the essence of innumerable Bio- ness;) the genial atmosphere in which rank graphies," will tell us, question it as we like, weeds of every kind attain the mastery over less than one genuine Biography may do, noble fruits in man's life, and utterly choke pleasantly and of its own accord! The time them out: one of the most crying maladies is approaching when History will be attempted of these days, and to be testified against, and on quite other principles; when the Court, the in all ways to the uttermost withstood. Wise, Senate, and Battle-field, receding more and of a wisdom far beyond our shallow depth, more into the background, the Temple, the was that old precept: Watch thy tongue : out Workshop, and Social Hearth, will advance of it are the issues of Life! "Man is properly more and more into the foreground; and His- an incarnated word:" the word that he speaks tory will not content itself with shaping some the man himself. Were eyes put into our answer to that question: How are men taxed head, that we might see; or only that we might and kept quiet then? but will seek to answer fancy, and plausibly pretend, we had seen? this other infinitely wider and higher question: Was the tongue suspended there, that it might How and what were men then? Not our Go- tell truly what we had seen, and make man vernment only, or the "House wherein our life the soul's brother of man; or only that it was led," but the Life itself we led there, will might utter vain sounds, jargon, soul-confus be inquired into. Of which latter it may being, and so divide man, as by enchanted walls found that Government, in any modern sense of Darkness, from union with man? Thou of the word, is after all but a secondary condition in the mere sense of Taration and Keeping quiet, a small, almost a pitiful one. Meanwhile let us welcome such Boswells, each in his degree, as bring us any genuine contribution, were it never so inadequate, so inconsiderable.

who wearest that cunning, Heaven-made or gan, a Tongue, think well of this. Speak not, I passionately entreat thee, till thy thought have silently matured itself, till thou have other than mad and mad-making noises to emit: hold thy tongue (thou hast it a-holding) till some meaning lie behind, to set it wagging. An exception was early taken against this Consider the significance of SILENCE: it is Life of Johnson, and all similar enterprises, boundless, never by meditating to be exhaustwhich we here recommend; and has been ed; unspeakably profitable to thee! Cease transmitted from critic to critic, and repeated that chaotic hubbub, wherein thy own soul in their several dialects, uninterruptedly, ever runs to waste, to confused suicidal dislocation since: That such jottings down of careless and stupor: out of Silence comes thy strength. conversation are an infringement of social Speech is silvern, Silence is golden; Speech privacy; a crime against our highest Free-is human, Silence is divine." Fool! thinkest dom, the Freedom of man's intercourse with thou that because no Boswell is there with man. To this accusation, which we have ass-skin and black-lead to note thy jargon, it read and heard oftener than enough, might it therefore dies and is harmless? Nothing dies, not be well for once to offer the flattest con-nothing can die. No idlest word thon speak tradiction, and plea of Not at all guilty? Not est but is a seed cast into Time, and grows that conversation is noted down, but that con- through all Eternity! The Recording Angel, versation should not deserve noting down, is consider it well, is no fable, but the truest of the evil. Doubtless, if conversation be falsely truths: the paper tablets thou canst burn; of recorded, then is it simply a Lie; and worthy the "iron leaf" there is no burning.—Truly, of being swept, with all despatch, to the Fa-if we can permit God Almighty to note down ther of Lies. But if, on the other hand, con- our conversation, thinking it good enough for versation can be authentically recorded, and Him,-any poor Boswell need not scruple to any one is ready for the task, let him by all work his will of it. means proceed with it; let conversation be kept in remembrance to the latest date possible. Nay, should the consciousness that a man may be among us "taking notes" tend, In any measure, to restrict those floods of idle

Leaving now this our English Odyssey, with its Singer and Scholiast, let us come to the Ulysses; that great Samuel Johnson himself, the far-experienced, "much-enduring man,"

it is that we claim a brotherhood with him, and so love to know his History, and come into clearer and clearer union with all that he feels, and says, and does.

the noblest of earthly tasks, that of Priesthood, and Guidance of mankind; by destiny, moreover, he was appointed to this task, and did actually, according to strength, fulfil the same: so that always the question, How; in what spirit; under what shape? remains for us to be asked and answered concerning him. For as the highest Gospel was a Biography, so is the Life of every good man still an indubitable Gospel, and preaches to the eye and heart and whole man, that Devils even must believe and tremble, these gladdest tidings: "Man is

melancholy stuff to the like purport, wherein thou, as in a nightmare Dream, sittest paralyz ed, and hast no force left,-was in very truth, if Johnson and waking men are to be credited, little other than a hag-ridden vision of deathsleep: some half-fact, more fatal at times than a whole falsehood. Shake it off; awake; up and be doing, even as it is given thee!

However, the chief thing to be noted was this: Amid those dull millions, who, as a dull flock, roll hither and thither, whithersoever they are led, and seem all sightless and slavish, accomplishing, attempting little save what the animal instinct (in its somewhat higher kind) might teach, (to keep themselves and their young ones alive,)-are scattered here and there superior natures, whose eye is not desti-heaven-born; not the thrall of Circumstances, tute of free vision, nor their heart of free voli- of Necessity, but the victorious subduer tion. These latter, therefore, examine and thereof: behold how he can become the determine, not what others do, but what it is Announcer of himself and of his Freedom;' right to do; towards which, and which only, and is ever what the Thinker has named him, will they, with such force as is given them, the Messias of Nature!"-Yes, Reader, all resolutely endeavour: for if the Machine, this that thou hast so often heard about "force living or inanimate, is merely fed, or desires of circumstances," "the creature of the time," to be fed, and so works; the Person can will," balancing of motives," and who knows what and so do. These are properly our Men, our Great Men; the guides of the dull host,-which follows them as by an irrevocable decree. They are the chosen of the world: they had this rare faculty not only of "supposing" and "inclining to think," but of knowing and believing; the nature of their being was, that they lived not by Hearsay but by clear Vision; while others hovered and swam along, in the grand Vanity-fair of the World, blinded by the mere "Shows of things," these saw into the Things themselves, and could walk as men having an eternal load-star, and with their feet on sure paths. Thus was there a Reality in their existence; something of a perennial character; in virtue of which indeed it is that the memory of them is perennial. Whoso belongs only to his own age, and reverences only us gilt Popinjays or soot-smeared Mumbojumbos, must needs die with it: though he have been crowned seven times in the Capitol, or seventy and seven times, and Rumour have blown his praises to all the four winds, deafen- | ing every ear therewith,-it avails not; there was nothing universal, nothing eternal in him; he must fade away, even as the Popinjaygildings and Scarecrow-apparel, which he could not see through. The great man does, in good truth, belong to his own age; nay, more so than any other man; being properly the synopsis and epitome of such age with its interests and influences: but belongs likewise to all ages, otherwise he is not great. What was transitory in him passes away; and an immortal part remains, the significance of which is in strict speech inexhaustible,-as that of every real object is. Aloft, conspicuous, on his enduring basis, he stands there, serene, unaltering; silently addresses to every new generation a new lesson and monition. Well is his Life worth writing, worth interpreting; and ever, in the new dialect of new times, of re-writing and re-interpreting.

Of such chosen men was Samuel Johnson: not ranking among the highest, or even the high, yet distinctly admitted into that sacred band; whose existence was no idle Dream, but a Reality which he transacted awake; nowise a Clothes-horse and Patent Digester, but a genuine Man. By nature he was gifted for

The Contradiction which yawns wide enough in every Life, which it is the meaning and task of Life to reconcile, was in Johnson's wider than in most. Seldom, for any man, has the contrast between the ethereal heavenward side of things, and the dark sordid earthward, been more glaring: whether we look at Nature's work with him or Fortune's, from first to last, heterogeneity, as of sunbeams and miry clay, is on all hands manifest. Whereby indeed, only this was declared, That much Life had been given him; many things to triumph over, a great work to do. Happily also he did it; better than the most.

Nature had given him a high, keen-visioned, almost poetic soul; yet withal imprisoned it in an inert, unsightly body: he that could never rest had not limbs that would move with him, but only roll and waddle: the inward eye, allpenetrating, all embracing, must look through bodily windows that were dim, half-blinded; he so loved men, and "never once saw the human face divine!" Not less did he prize the love of men; he was eminently social; the approbation of his fellows was dear to him, "valuable," as he owned, "if from the meanest of human beings:" yet the first impression he produced on every man was to be cne of aversion, almost of disgust. By Nature it was farther ordered that the imperious Johnson should be born poor: the ruler-soul, strong in its native royalty, generous, uncontrollable, like the lion of the woods, was to be housed, then, in such a dwelling-place: of Disfigure ment, Disease, and lastly of a Poverty which itself made him the servant of servants. Thus was the born King likewise a born Slave: the divine spirit of Music must awake imprisoned amid dull-croaking universal Discords; the Ariel finds himself encased in the coarse hulls of a Caliban. So is it more or less, we know, (and thou, O Reader, knowest and feelest even

now,) with all men: yet with the fewest men | felt that little spectacle of mischievous schoolin any such degree as with Johnson.

boys to be a great one. For us, who look back Fortune, moreover, which had so managed on it, and what followed it, now from afar, there his first appearance in the world, lets not her arise questions enough: How looked thes hand lie idle, or turn the other way, but works urchins? What jackets and galligaskins h unweariedly in the same spirit, while he is they; felt headgear, or of dogskin leather? What journeying through the world. What such a was old Lichfield doing then; what thinking? mind, stamped of Nature's noblest metal, and so on, through the whole series of Corthough in so ungainly a die, was specially poral Trim's "auxiliary verbs." A picture of and best of all fitted for, might still be a ques-it all fashions itself together;-only unhappily tion. To none of the world's few Incorporated we have no brush, and no fingers. Guilds could he have adjusted himself without Boyhood is now past; the ferula of Pedadifficulty, without distortion; in none been a gogue waves harmless, in the distance: SamGuild-Brother well at ease. Perhaps, if we uel has struggled up to uncouth bulk and look to the strictly practical nature of his youthhood, wrestling with Disease and Povfaculty, to the strength, decision, method that erty, all the way; which two continue still his manifests itself in him, we may say that his companions. At College we see little of him: calling was rather towards Active than Specu- yet thus much, that things went not well. A lative life; that as Statesman, (in the higher, rugged wild-man of the desert, awakened to now obsolete sense,) Lawgiver, Ruler: in the feeling of himself; proud as the proudest, short, as Doer of the Work, he had shone even poor as the poorest: stoically shut up, silently more than as Speaker of the Word. His hon- enduring the incurable: what a world of blackesty of heart, his courageous temper, the value est gloom, with sun-gleams, and pale, tearful be set on things outward and material, might moon-gleams, and flickerings of a celestial and have made him a King among Kings. Had an infernal splendour, was this that now opened the golden age of those new French Prophets, for him! But the weather is wintry; and the when it shall be: A chacun selon sa capacité; à toes of the man are looking through his shoes. chaque capacité selon ses œuvres, but arrived! In- His muddy features grow of a purple and seadeed even in our brazen and Birmingham-lacker green colour; a flood of black indignation age, he himself regretted that he had not be-mantling beneath. A truculent, raw-boned come a Lawyer, and risen to be Chancellor, figure! Meat he has probably little; hope he which he might well have done. However, it has less; his feet, as we said, have come into was otherwise appointed. To no man does brotherhood with the cold mire. Fortune throw open all the kingdoms of this would, and say: It is thine; choose where thou wilt dwell! To the most she opens hardly the smallest cranny or doghutch, and says, not without asperity There, that is thine whilst thou canst keep it: nestle thyself there, and bless Heaven! Alas, men must fit themselves into many things: some forty years ago, for instance, the noblest and ablest man in all the British lands might be seen not swaying the royal sceptre, or the pontiff's censer, on the pinnacle of the World, but gauging ale-tubs in the little burgh of Dumfries! Johnson came a little nearer the mark than Burns: but with him too, "Strength was mournfully denied its arena," he too had to fight Fortune at strange odds, all his life long.

Johnson's disposition for royalty, (had the Fates so ordered it,) is well seen in early boyhood. "His favourites," says Boswell, "used to receive very liberal assistance from him; and such was the submission and deference with which he was treated, that three of the boys, of whom Mr. Hector was sometimes one, used to come in the morning as his humble attendants, and carry him to school. One in the middle stooped, while he sat upon his back, and one on each side supported him; and thus was he borne triumphant." The purfly, sandblind lubber and blubber, with his open mouth and his face of bruised honeycomb: yet already dominant, imperial, and irresistible! Not in the "King's chair" (of human arms) as we see, do his three satellites carry him along: rather on the Tyrant's-saddle, the back of his fellow-creature, must he ride prosperous! The child is father of the man. He who had seen fif'v vears into coming Time, would have

"Shall I be particular," inquires Sir John Hawkins, "and relate a circumstance of his distress, that cannot be imputed to him as an effect of his own extravagance or irregularity, and consequently reflects no disgrace on his memory? He had scarce any change of raiment, and, in a short time after Corbet left him, but one pair of shoes, and those so old that his feet were seen through them: a gentleman of his college, the father of an eminent clergyman now living, directed a servitor one morning to place a new pair at the door of Johnson's chamber; who seeing them upon his first going out, so far forgot himself and the spirit which must have actuated his unknown bene. factor, that, with all the indignation of an insulted man, he threw them away."

How exceedingly surprising !-The Rev. Dr. Hall remarks: "As far as we can judge from a cursory view of the weekly account in the buttery books, Johnson appears to have lived as well as other commoners and scholars." Alas! such "cursory view of the buttery books," now from the safe distance of a cen tury, in the safe chair of a College Mastership, is one thing; the continual view of the empty (or locked) buttery itself was quite a different thing. But hear our Knight, how he farther discourses. "Johnson," quoth Sir John, "could not at this early period of his life divest himself of an idea that poverty was disgraceful; and was very severe in his censures of that economy in both our Universities, which exacted at meals the attendance of poor scholars, under the several denominations of Servitors in the one and Sizers in the other: he thought that the Scholar's, like the Christian life, le velled all distinctions of rank and worldly pre