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His physical infirmities were partly accountable for roughness of manner. He suffered from deafness and was shortsighted to an extreme degree, although by minute attention he could often perceive objects with an accuracy which surprised his friends (Piozzi, Anecdotes, p. 287; MISS REYNOLDS in Johnsoniana; MADAME D'ARBLAY, Diary, i. 85, ii. 174; BOSWELL, i. 41, &c.). He was thus often unable to observe the failings of his companions. Manners learnt in Grub Street were not delicate; his mode of gratifying a voracious appetite was even disgusting (BOSWELL, i. 468); while his dress was slovenly, and he had 'no passion for clean linen' (ib. i. 397). He piqued himself, indeed, upon his courtesy; and, when not provoked by opposition, or unable to perceive the failings of others, was both dignified and polite. Nobody could pay more graceful compliments, especially to ladies, and he was always the first to make advances after a quarrel. His friends never ceased to love him; and their testimony to the singular tenderness which underlay his roughness is unanimous. He loved children, and was even too indulgent to them; he rejoiced greatly when he persuaded Dr. Sumner to abolish holiday tasks (PIOZZI, Anecdotes, p. 21), and was most attentive to the wants of his servants. He was kind to animals, and bought oysters himself for his cat Hodge, that his servants might not be prejudiced against it (BOSWELL, iv. 178). He loved the poor, as Mrs. Piozzi says, as she never saw any one else do; and tended to be indiscriminate in his charity. He never spent, he says, more than 7ol. or 80l. of his pension upon himself. Miss Reynolds was first attracted by hearing that he used to put pennies into the hands of outcast children sleeping in the streets, that they might be able to buy a breakfast. Boswell (iv. 321) tells of his carrying home a poor outcast woman from the streets and doing his best to restore her to an honest life. His services to poor friends by lending his pen or collecting money from the rich were innumerable. His constantly expressed contempt for 'sentimental' grievances was not, as frequently happens, a mask for want of sympathy, though it was often so interpreted. He not only felt for all genuine suffering, from death, poverty, and sickness to the wounded vanity of his friends, but did his utmost to alleviate it.

This depth of tender feeling was, in fact, the foundation of Johnson's character. His massive and keenly logical, but narrow and rigid intellect, was the servant of strong passions, of prejudices imbibed through early association, and of the constitutional melancholy which made him a determined pessimist. He feared madness, and constantly expressed his dread of the next world, and his conviction of the misery of this. His toryism and high-churchmanship had become part of his nature. He looked leniently upon superstitions, such as ghosts and second-sight, which appeared to fall in with his religious beliefs, while his strong common sense often made him even absurdly sceptical in ordinary matters. According to Mrs. Piozzi (Anecdotes, pp. 138, 141) he would not believe in the earthquake at Lisbon for six months, and ridiculed the statement that red-hot balls had been used at the siege of Gibraltar. His profound respect for truth, emphasised by all his friends, had made him impatient of loose talk, and a rigid sifter of evidence. His melancholy, as often happens, was combined with a strong sense of humour. Hawkins (p. 258), Murphy (p. 139), and Mrs. Piozzi (Anecdotes, pp. 205, 298) agree that he was admirable at sheer buffoonery, and Madame d'Arblay describes his powers of mimicry. No man could laugh more heartily; like a rhinoceros, said Tom Davies (Boswell, ii. 378); or as Boswell describes it, so as to be heard from Temple Bar to Fleet Ditch (ii. 268). The faculty shows itself little in his earlier writings. His sesquipedalian style appears in his early efforts, and seems to have been partly caught from the seventeenth-century writers, such as Sir Thomas Browne, whom he studied and admired; and in whose high-built latinised phraseology there was something congenial. The simplicity and clearness of the style accepted in his youth affected his taste, and he acquired the ponderosity without the finer qualities of his model. His love of talk diminished his mannerism in later years; and, at his worst, his phrases are not mere verbiage, but an awkward embodiment of very keen dialectical power. The strong sense, shrewd and humorous observations which appear in his 'Lives of the Poets' give him the very first rank among all the talkers of whom we have any adequate report. Carlyle calls him the last of the tories. He was the typical embodiment of the

strength and weakness, the common sense masked by grotesque prejudice, and the genuine sentiment underlying a rough outside, which characterise the 'true-born Englishman of the eighteenth century.' He was the first author who, living by his pen alone, preserved absolute independence of character, and was as much respected for his high morality as for his intellectual power.

A full list of Johnson's works, drawn up by BOSWELL, is in Hill's 'Boswell,' i. 16-24. The works, published separately, are: 1. Abridgment and translation of Lobo's 'Voyage to Abyssinia,' 1735. 2. 'London,' 1738. 3. 'Marmor Norfolciense; or an Essay on an Ancient Prophetical Inscription in Monkish Rhyme, lately discovered near Lynne in Norfolk by Probus Britannicus,' 1739 (also in Gent. Mag.). 4. 'Proposals for Publishing "Bibliotheca Harleiana," a Catalogue of the Library of the Earl of Oxford' (also in Gent. Mag., and prefixed to first volume of Catalogue), 1742. 5. 'Life of Richard Savage,' 1744. 6. 'Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with Remarks on Sir Thomas] H[armer's] Edition of Shakespeare, and Proposals for a New Edition of that Poet,' 1745. 7. 'Plan for a Dictionary of the English Language, addressed to Philip Dormer, Earl of Chesterfield,' 1747. 8. 'The Vanity of Human Wishes, being the Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated,' 1749. 9. 'Irene,' 1749; 2nd edit. 1754. 10. The 'Rambler,' 1750-2 (see above). II. Papers in the 'Adventurer,' 1753 (see above). 12. 'A Dictionary, with a Grammar and History of the English Language,' 1755. Five editions appeared during his lifetime; the eleventh in 1816. A verbatim reprint of the author's last edition was published by Bohn in 1854. An abridgment by Johnson appeared in 1756 and was several times reprinted. Supplements, abridgments, and editions by other authors have also appeared. 13. 'Account of an Attempt to ascertain the Longitude at Sea (for Z. Williams), 1755 (see above). 14. 'Life of Sir Thomas Browne,' prefixed to new edition of 'Christian Morals,' 1756. 15. 'The Idler,' 1758-1760 (see above). 16. 'Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia,' 1759; a facsimile of the first edition, with a bibliography by James Macaulay, was published in 1884. 17. 'Life of Ascham,' prefixed to 'Ascham's English Works,' by Bennet, 1763. 18. 'Plays of William Shakespeare, with

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Notes,' 8 vols. 1765. 19. "The False Alarm,' 1770. 20. 'Thoughts on the late Transactions respecting Falkland Islands,' 1771. 21. The Patriot,' 1774. 22. 'A Journey

to the Western Isles of Scotland,' 1775- 23. 'Taxation no Tyranny,' 1775. 24. 'Prefaces Biographical and Critical to the Works of the most Eminent English Poets,' 1779 and 1781. Published separately as 'Lives of the English Poets.' The edition by Peter Cunningham appeared in 1854; the six chief lives, with preface by Matthew Arnold, in 1878, and a complete edition, begun by Dr. Birkbeck Hill and completed by H. Spencer Scott, in 1905 (Oxford, 3 vols.).

Johnson's 'Prayers and Meditations,' edited by G. Strahan, appeared in 1785; and his 'Letters' to Madame Piozzi in 1788. 'Sermons left for Publication,' by John Taylor, which appeared in 1788 and passed through several editions, have also been attributed to him. 'An Account of the Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson from his Birth to his Eleventh Year, written by Himself' (1805) was a fragment saved from some papers burnt by him before his death, and not seen by Boswell. Johnson also contributed many articles to the 'Gentleman's Magazine' from 1738 to 1748; some to the 'Universal Visitor' in 1756; and some to the 'Literary Magazine' of the same year. He wrote many prefaces, dedications, and other trifles for his friends.

His collected works were edited by Hawkins in 1787 in 11 vols., to which two, edited by Stockdale, were added. Murphy edited them in II vols. in 1796. The Oxford edition of 1825 was edited by Francis Pearson Walesby, fellow of Lincoln College, and professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. This contains the works in 9 vols., and the 'Parliamentary Debates' (also published separately, 2 vols. 1787) in 2 vols.

THE LIFE OF RICHARD BRINSLEY
SHERIDAN

FRASER RAE

[From the Dictionary of National Biography.]

SHERIDAN, RICHARD BRINSLEY (1751-1816), statesman and dramatist, born 30 Oct. 1751 at 12 Dorset Street, Dublin, was grandson of Thomas Sheridan (1687-1738) [q. v.], and son of Thomas Sheridan (1719–1788) [q. v.]. He received the rudiments of learning from his father, and from the age of seven till eight and a half attended a school in Dublin kept by Samuel Whyte. Then he rejoined his parents, who had migrated to London, and he never revisited his native city. In 1762 he was sent to Harrow school, where he remained till 1768, two years after his mother's death. Subsequently a private tutor, Lewis Ker, directed his studies in his father's house in London, while Angelo instructed him in fencing and horsemanship.

At the end of 1770 Sheridan's father settled in Bath and taught elocution. His children became acquainted with those of Thomas Linley (1732-1795) [q. v.], a composer and teacher of music, who had given Sheridan's mother lessons in singing. One of Sheridan's friends at Harrow was Nathaniel Brassey Halhed [q. v.], who went to Oxford from Harrow. With him Sheridan carried on a correspondence from Bath. They projected a literary periodical called 'Hernan's Miscellany,' of which the first number was written but not published; and they prepared a metrical version of the epistles of Aristænetus, which appeared in 1771, and in a second edition in 1773. Halhed translated the epistles, and Sheridan revised and edited them. Another volume of translations from the same author which Sheridan undertook never saw the light. A farce called 'Ixion' was written by Halhed, recast by Sheridan, and renamed 'Jupiter.' It was offered to Garrick and Foote, but not accepted by either. Sheridan wrote two sets of verses, which appeared in the 'Bath Chronicle' during 1771; the title of one set was 'Clio's Protest or the Picture Varnished;' of the other "The Ridotto of Bath,' which was reprinted and had a large sale.

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