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, Work out thy Artisanship in the spirit of an Artist! They who talk loudest about the dignity of Art, and fancy that they too are Artistic

consider well what manner of man this was, who felt himself to be only a hired day-labourer. A labourer that was worthy of his hire; that has laboured not as an eye-servant, but as one found faithful! Neither was Johnson in those days perhaps wholly a unique. Time was when, for money, you might have ware: and needed not, in all departments, in that of the Epic Poem, in that of the Blacking Bottle, to rest content with the mere persuasion that you had ware. It was a happier time. But as yet the seventh Apocalyptic Bladder (of PUFFERY) had not been rent open,―to whirl and grind, as in a West-Indian Tornado, all earthly trades and things into wreck, and dust, and consummation,-and regeneration. Be it quickly, since it must be !

Closely connected with this quality of Valour, partly as springing from it, partly as protected | by it, are the more recognisable qualities of Truthfulness in word and thought, and Hones-guild-brethren, and of the Celestials, let them ty in action. There is a reciprocity of influence here for as the realizing of Truthfulness and Honesty is the Life-light and great aim of Valour, so without Valour they cannot, in anywise, be realized. Now, in spite of all practical shortcomings, no one that sees into the significance of Johnson, will say that his prime object was not Truth. In conversation, doubtless, you may observe him, on occasion, fighting as if for victory;—and must pardon these ebulliences of a careless hour, which were not without temptation and provocation. Remark likewise two things; that such prizearguings were ever on merely superficial debatable questions; and then that they were argued generally by the fair laws of battle, and logic-fence, by one cunning in that same. If 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 in 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." thoughts in the latter part of his life were

"His

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:

frequently employed on his deceased friends; | great emotion of tenderness, the same hopes. he often muttered these or such-like sentences: We kissed and parted; I humbly hope, to meet "Poor man! and then he died." How he again, and to part no more." 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 heavenlike bounteous as his? The widow's mite, we | know, was greater than all the other gifts.

"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 day, to go and attend the stall in his place. My pride prevented me; I gave my father a refusal. And now to-day I have been at Uttoxeter; I went into the market, at the time of business, uncovered my head, and stood with it bare, for an hour, on the spot where my father's stall used to stand. In contrition I stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory." Who does not figure to himself this specta

Perhaps it is this divine feeling of Affection, throughout manifested, that principally attracts us towards Johnson. A true brother of men is he; and filial lover of the Earth; who, with little bright spots of Attachment, "where lives and works some loved one," has beautified "this rough solitary Earth into a peopled gar-cle, amid the " rainy weather, and the sneers," den." Litchfield, with its mostly dull and limited 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:"

or wonder, "of the by-standers?" The memory 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 we can paint. "Repentance! Repentance!" he proclaims, as with passionate sobs:-but only to the ear of Heaven, if Heaven will give him audience: the earthly ear, and heart, that should have heard it, are now closed, unresponsive for ever.

"Sunday, October 18, 1767. Yesterday, at about ten in the morning, I took my leave for ever of my dear old friend, Catherine Chambers, who came to live with my mother about 1724, and has been but little parted from us since. She buried my father, my brother, and 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 another, through Johnson's whole character, I would, if she was willing, say a short prayer practical and intellectual, modifying both, is beside her. She expressed great desire to hear not to be doubted. Yet through what singular me; and held up her poor hands as she lay in distortions and superstitions, moping melanbed, with great fervour, while I prayed kneel-cholies, blind habits, whims about "entering ing by her. 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 in ter 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, -may remain undecided.

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 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 specula- loved, and communed kindly, had not the tion, French, German, as well as domestic; terrestrial dross and darkness, that was in while Johnson's name, out of England, is hardly them, withstood! One day their spirits, what anywhere to be met with. In spiritual stature truth was in each, will be found working, livthey are almost equal; both great, among the ing in harmony and free union, even here begreatest: yet how unlike in likeness! Hume low. They were the two half-men of their has the widest methodizing, comprehensive time: whoso should combine the intrepid Caneye; Johnson the keenest for perspicacity and dour, and decisive scientific Clearness of minute detail: so had, perhaps chiefly, their Hume, with the Reverence, the Love, and deeducation ordered it. Neither of the two rose vout Humility of Johnson, were the whole into Poetry; yet both to some approximation man of a new time. Till such whole man arthereof: Hume to something of an Epic clear- rive for us, and the distracted time admit of ness and method, as in his delineation of the such, might the heavens but bless poor EngCommonwealth Wars; Johnson to many a land with half-men worthy to tie the shoedeep Lyric tone of plaintiveness, and impetu- latchets of these, resembling these even from ous graceful power, scattered over his fugitive afar! Be both attentively regarded, let the compositions. Both, rather to the general sur-true Effort of both prosper;—and for the preprise, had a certain rugged Humour shining sent, both take our affectionate farewell! through their earnestness: the indication, in

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 suffer- and terror, but of hope and soft verna! suning, having a few minutes previously, called beams! It was at Frankfort on the Mayn, on for paper for the purpose of writing, and ex- the 28th of August, 1749, that this man entered pressed his delight at the arrival of spring." | the world-and now, gently welcoming the

birth-day of his eighty-second spring, he closes his eyes, and takes farewell.

when our sunset was of a living sun; and its bright countenance and shining return to us, not on the morrow, but "no more again, at all, for ever!" In such a scene, silence, as over the mysterious great, is for him that has some feeling thereof, the fittest mood. Nevertheless by silence, the distant is not brought into communion: the feeling of each is without response from the bosom of his brother. There are now, what some years ago there were not, English hearts that know something of what those three words, "Death of Goethe," mean;

the event, which are not to be translated into speech, may these few, through that imperfect medium, prove acceptable.

So then, our greatest has departed. That melody of life, with its cunning tones, which took captive ear and heart, has gone silent; the heavenly force that dwelt here victorious over so much, is here no longer; thus far, not farther, by speech and by act, shall the wise man utter himself forth. The End! What solemn meaning lies in that sound, as it peals mournfully through the soul, when a living friend has passed away! All now is closed, irrevocable; the changeful life-picture, grow-to such men, among their many thoughts on ing daily into new coherence, under new touches and hues, has suddenly become completed and unchangeable; there, as it lay, it is dipped, from this moment, in the æther of the Heavens, and shines transfigured, to endure even so for ever, Time and Time's Empire; stern, wide devouring, yet not without their grandeur! The week-day man, who was one of us, has put on the garment of Eternity, and become radiant and triumphant; the present is all at once the past; Hope is suddenly cut away, and only the backward vistas of Memory remain, shone on by a light that proceeds not from this earthly sun.

"Death," says the Philosopher, "is a commingling of Eternity with Time; in the death of a good man, Eternity is seen looking through Time." With such a sublimity here offered to eye and heart, it is not unnatural to look with new earnestness before and behind, and ask, what space in those years and æons of computed Time, this man with his activity may influence; what relation to the world of change and mortality, which the earthly name Life, he who is even now called to the Immortals has borne and may bear.

Goethe, it is commonly said, made a new era in Literature; a Poetic era began with him, the end or ulterior tendencies of which are yet nowise generally visible. This common saying is a true one, and true with a far deeper meaning than, to the most, it conveys Were the Poet but a sweet sound and singer, solacing the ear of the idle with pleasant songs, and the new Poet one who could sing his idle,

The death of Goethe, even for the many hearts that personally loved him, is not a thing to be lamented over; is to be viewed, in his own spirit, as a thing full of greatness and sacredness. "For all men it is appointed once to die." To this man the full measure of a man's life had been granted, and a course and task such as to only a few in the whole generations of the world; what else could we hope or require but that now he should be called hence and have leave to depart, "hav-pleasant song, to a new air, we should account ing finished the work that was given him to do?" If his course, as we may say of him more justly than of any other, was like the Sun's, so also was his going down. For indeed, as the material Sun is the eye and revealer of all things, so is Poetry, so is the World-Poet in a spiritual sense. Goethe's life, too, if we examine it, is well represented in that emblem of a solar Day. Beautifully rose our summer sun, gorgeous in the red fervid East, scattering the spectres and sickly damps (of both of which there were enough to scatter)-strong, benignant in his noon-day clearness, walking triumphant through the upper realms; and now, mark also how he sets! So Stirbt ein Held: anbetungsvoll! "So dies a hero; sight to be worshipped."

And yet, when the inanimate, material sun has sunk and disappeared, it will happen that we stand to gaze into the still glowing West; and here rise great, pale, motionless clouds, like coulisses or curtains, to close the flametheatre within; and then, in that death-pause of the Day, an unspeakable feeling will come over us; it is as if the poor sounds of Time, those hammerings of tired Labour on his anvils, those voices of simple men, had become awful and supernatural; as if in listening, we could hear them "mingle with the ever-pealing .ones of old Eternity." In such moments the secrets of Life lie opener to us; mysterious things flit over the soul; Life itself seems holier, wonderful, and fearful. How much more

him a small matter, and his performance small. But this man, it is not unknown to many, was a Poet in such a sense as the late generations have witnessed no other; as it is, in this generation, a kind of distinction to believe in the existence of, in the possibility of. The true Poet is ever, as of old, the Seer; whose eye has been gifted to discern the godlike mystery of God's universe, and decipher some new lines of its celestial writing; we can still call him a Fates and Seer; for he sees into this greatest of secrets "the open secret ;" hidden things become clear; how the future (both resting on Eternity) is but another phasis of the present; thereby are his words in very truth prophetic; what he has spoken shall be done.

It begins now to be everywhere surmised that the real Force, which in this world all things must obey, is Insight, Spiritual Vision, and Determination. The Thought is parent of the Deed, nay, is living soul of it, and last and continual, as well as first mover of it; is the foundation, and beginning, and essence, therefore, of man's whole existence here below. In this sense, it has been said, the wond of man (the uttered thoughts of man) is still a magic formula, whereby he rules the world. Do not the winds and waters, and all tumultuous powers, inanimate and animate, obey him? A poor, quite mechanieal, Magician speaksand fire-winged ships cross the ocean at his bidding. Or mark, above all, that "raging of