And, ere our maudlin genius mounts again, court, And the grape bleeds out that black poison, port. Sad poison to themselves, to us still worse, Brew'd and rebrew'd, a doubled trebled curse. Toss'd in the crowd of various rules, I find Still some material business left behind. The fig, the gooseberry, beyond all grapes, Who from the full meal yield to natural rest The saddest hour, to some, that damps the day, At once: e'en these may hasten your repose, Now rapid verse, now halting nearer prose; There smooth, here rough, what I suppose you choose, 3 As men of taste hate sameness in the Muse. We march for Hoxter-ever, ever yours. 3 Conseiller d'Estat. you. THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL. D. BY S. W. SINGER, Esq. PERHAPS no distinguished character, ancient or modern, has been so fortunate in a biographer as Johnson; nor does there exist in any language so complete a picture of the mind and habits of an illustrious scholar: Etiam mortuus loquitur,' says Cumberland, every man who can buy a book, has bought a Boswell.' It will suffice, then, on the present occasion to detail a few dates and facts, without attempting a history of his literary progress. SAMUEL JOHNSON was the son of Michael Johnson, a bookseller at Litchfield, and was born there on the seventh of September, 1709. He was the eldest of two sons; his brother Nathaniel succeeded his father in his business, and died in his twenty-fifth year, in 1737. Johnson inherited from his father that morbid melancholy which occasionally depressed him, and which his mighty mind could not always overcome. He was also unfortunate enough to imbibe, from his nurse, the disease called the king's evil; and his parents, who were stanch jacobites, presented him to Queen Anne for the royal touch; but, notwithstanding M |