his Lordship, whom he calls 'poor Lyttelton,' for returning thanks to the Critical Reviewers for having 'kindly recommended' his Dialogues of the Dead. Such acknowledgments (says my friend) never can be proper, since they must be paid either for flattery or for justice.' In my opinion the most upright man, who has been tried on a false accusation, may, when he is acquitted, make a bow to his jury. And when those who are so much the arbiters of literary merit, as in a considerable degree to influence the public opinion, review an author's work placido lumine, when I am afraid mankind in general are better pleased with severity, he may surely express a grateful sense of their civility.

with an emulation that occasioned hourly disgust and ended in lasting animosity. You may see (said he to me, when the Poets' Lives were printed) that dear Boothby is at my heart still.'

Miss Hill Boothby, who was the only daughter of Brook Boothby, Esq., and his wife, Elizabeth Fitzherbert, was somewhat older than Johnson. She was born October 27, 1708, and died January 16, 1756. Six letters addressed to her by Johnson in the year 1755 are printed in Mrs. Piozzi's collection; and a prayer composed by him on her death be found in his Prayers and Meditations. His affection for her induced him to preserve and bind up in a volume thirty-three of her letters, which were purchased from the widow of his servant, Francis Barber, and published by R. Phillips in 1805.

may

But highly as he valued this lady, his attachment to Miss Molly Aston (afterwards Mrs. Brodie) appears to have been still more ardent. He burned (says Mrs. Piozzi) many letters in the last week [of his life], I am told, and those written by his mother drew from him a flood of tears when the paper they were written on was all consumed. Mr. Sastres saw him cast a melancholy look upon their ashes, which he took up and examined, to see if a word was still legible. Nobody has ever mentioned what became of Miss Aston's letters, though he once told me himself they should be the last papers he would destroy, and added these lines with a very faltering voice:

'Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part,
And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart:
Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er,

The muse forgot, and thou beloved no more.'

Additions to Mrs. Piozzi's Collection of Dr. Johnson's Letters.-M.]

Various Readings in the Life of Lyttelton

'He solaced [himself] his grief by writing a long poem to her memory.

"The production rather [of a mind that means well than thinks vigorously] as it seems of leisure than of study, rather effusions than compositions.

'His last literary [work] production.

'[Found the way] Undertook to persuade.'

As the introduction to his critical examination of the genius and writings of Young, he did Mr. Herbert Croft, then a Barrister of Lincoln's Inn, now a clergyman, the honour to adopt a Life of Young written by that gentleman, who was the friend of Dr. Young's son, and wished to vindicate him from some very erroneous remarks to his prejudice. Mr. Croft's performance was subjected to the revision of Dr. Johnson, as appears from the following note to Mr. John Nichols : 1

"This Life of Dr. Young was written by a friend of his son. What is crossed with black is expunged by the author, what is crossed by red is expunged by me. If you find anything more that can be well omitted, I shall not be sorry to see it yet shorter.'

It has always appeared to me to have a considerable share of merit, and to display a pretty successful imitation of Johnson's style. When I mentioned this to a very eminent literary character,' he opposed me vehemently, exclaiming, 'No, no, it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all his pomp without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak without its strength.' This was an image so happy, that one

1 Gentleman's Magazine, vol. iv. p. 10.

[The late Mr. Burke.-M.]

might have thought he would have been satisfied with it; but he was not. And setting his mind again to work, he added, with exquisite felicity, 'It has all the contortions of the Sibyl, without the inspiration.'

Mr. Croft very properly guards us against supposing that Young was a gloomy man; and mentions that 'his parish was indebted to the good-humour of the author of the Night Thoughts for an assembly and a bowling-green.' A letter from a noble foreigner is quoted, in which he is said to have been 'very pleasant in conversation.'

Mr. Langton, who frequently visited him, informs me that there was an air of benevolence in his manner, but that he could obtain from him less information than he had hoped to receive from one who had lived so much in intercourse with the brightest men of what has been called the Augustan age of England; and that he showed a degree of eager curiosity concerning the common occurrences that were then passing, which appeared somewhat remarkable in a man of such intellectual stores, of such an advanced age, and who had retired from life with declared disappointment in his expectations.

An instance at once of his pensive turn of mind, and his cheerfulness of temper, appeared in a little story which he himself told to Mr. Langton, when they were walking in his garden: 'Here (said he) I had put a handsome sun-dial, with this inscription, Eheu fugaces! which (speaking with a smile) was sadly verified, for by the next morning my dial had been carried off.'1

1 The late Mr. James Ralph told Lord Macartney that he passed an evening with Dr. Young at Lord Melcombe's (then Mr. Doddington)

It gives me much pleasure to observe that however Johnson may have casually talked, yet when he sits as an ardent judge zealous to his trust, giving sentence' upon the excellent works of Young, he allows them the high praise to which they are justly entitled. 'The Universal Passion (says he) is indeed a very great performance,-his distichs have the weight of solid sentiment, and his points the sharpness of resistless truth.'

But I was most anxious concerning Johnson's decision upon Night Thoughts, which I esteem as a mass of the grandest and richest poetry that human genius has ever produced: and was delighted to find this character of that work: 'In his Night Thoughts he has exhibited a very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflection and striking allusions: a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage.' And afterwards, 'Particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole; and in the whole there is a magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese plantation, the magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity.'

But there is in this poem not only all that Johnson so well brings in view, but a power of the pathetic beyond almost any example that I have seen. He who does not feel his nerves shaken, and his heart

at Hammersmith. The Doctor happening to go out into the garden, Mr. Doddington observed to him, on his return, that it was a dreadful night, as in truth it was, there being a violent storm of rain and wind. 'No, sir (replied the Doctor), it is a very fine night. The Lord is abroad.'