ism. Bute wished to be thought a patron of men of letters; and Johnson was one of the most eminent and one of the most needy men of letters in Europe. A pension of three hundred a year was graciously offered, 5 and with very little hesitation accepted.1 35. This event produced a change in Johnson's whole way of life. For the first time since his boyhood he no longer felt the daily goad urging him to the daily Relief from toil. He was at liberty, after thirty years of poverty. 10 anxiety and drudgery, to indulge his constitutional indolence, to lie in bed till two in the afternoon, and to sit up talking till four in the morning, without fearing either the printer's devil or the sheriff's officer. Shake appearance. 36. One laborious task indeed he had bound himself 15 to perform. He had received large subscriptions for his promised edition of Shakspeare; he had lived on those subscriptions during some years; and he The could not without disgrace omit to perform his part speare: its of the contract. His friends repeatedly exhorted belated 20 him to make an effort; and he repeatedly resolved to do so. But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his resolutions, month followed month, year followed year, and nothing was done. He prayed fervently against his idleness; he determined, as often as he received the 25 sacrament, that he would no longer doze away and trifle away his time; but the spell under which he lay resisted prayer and sacrament. His private notes at this time are made up of self-reproaches. "My indolence," he wrote on Easter eve in 1764, "has sunk into grosser 30 sluggishness. A kind of strange oblivion has overspread 1 Note, p. 67. о me, so that I know not what has become of the last year." Easter 1765 came, and found him still in the same state. "My time," he wrote, "has been unprofitably spent, and seems as a dream that has left nothing behind. My memory grows confused, and I know not how the days 5 pass over me.' ."1 Happily for his honour, the charm which held him captive was at length broken by no gentle or friendly hand. He had been weak enough to pay serious attention to a story about a ghost which haunted a house in Cock Lane, and had actually gone himself, 10 with some of his friends, at one in the morning, to St. John's Church, Clerkenwell, in the hope of receiving a communication from the perturbed spirit. But the spirit, though adjured with all solemnity, remained obstinately silent; and it soon appeared that a naughty girl 15 of eleven had been amusing herself by making fools of so many philosophers.2 Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk with popularity, and burning with party spirit, was looking for some man of established fame and Tory politics to insult, celebrated the Cock Lane Ghost 20 in three cantos, nicknamed Johnson Pomposo, asked where the book was which had been so long promised and so liberally paid for, and directly accused the great moralist of cheating. This terrible word proved effectual; and in October 1765 appeared, after a delay of 25 nine years, the new edition of Shakspeare.* 37. This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty, but added nothing to the fame of his abilities and learning. The preface, though it contains some 1 Note, p. 67. 2 Note, p. 67. 8 Note, p. 67. 4 List of Works, 13, p. xxix. good passages, is not in his best manner. The most valuable notes are those in which he had an opportunity of showing how attentively he had during many its merits; years observed human life and human nature. The best specimen is the note on the character of Polonius. Nothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelm Meister's° admirable examination of Hamlet. But here praise must end. It would be difficult to name a O more slovenly, a more worthless, edition of any its defects; 10 great classic. The reader may turn over play after play without finding one happy conjectural emendation, or one ingenious and satisfactory explanation of a passage which had baffled preceding commentators. Johnson had, in his prospectus, told the world that he was 15 peculiarly fitted for the task which he had undertaken, because he had, as a lexicographer, been under the necessity of taking a wider view of the English language than any of his predecessors. That his knowledge of our literature was extensive is indisputable. But, unfor20 tunately, he had altogether neglected that very part of our literature with which it is especially desirable that an editor of Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dangerous to assert a negative. Yet little will be risked by the assertion that in the two folio volumes of the English 25 Dictionary there is not a single passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan age, except Shakspeare and Ben. Even from Ben the quotations are few. Johnson might easily, in a few months, have made himself well acquainted with every old play that was extant. But it 30 never seems to have occurred to him that this was a 1 Note, p. 68. 2 p. x., "Shakespeare and Ben Jonson." D necessary preparation for the work which he had undertaken.1 He would doubtless have admitted that it would be the height of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with the works of Eschylus and Euripides to publish an edition of Sophocles. Yet he ventured to publish an 5 edition of Shakspeare, without having ever in his life, as far as can be discovered, read a single scene of Massinger, Ford, Decker, Webster, Marlow, Beaumont, or Fletcher.2 His detractors were noisy and scurrilous. its reception. Those who most loved and honoured him had little Ic to say in praise of the manner in which he had discharged the duty of a commentator. He had, however, acquitted himself of a debt which had long lain heavy on his conscience; and he sunk back into the repose from which the sting of satire had roused him. He long con- 15 tinued to live upon the fame which he had already won. He was honoured by the University of Oxford with a Doctor's degree, by the Royal Academy° with a professorship, and by the King with an interview, in which his Majesty most graciously expressed a hope that so 20 excellent a writer would not cease to write. In the interval, however, between 1765 and 1775 Johnson published only two or three political tracts,3 the longest of which he could have produced in forty-eight hours, if he had worked as he worked on the Life of Savage and on 25 Rasselas. 38. But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was active. The influence exercised by his conversation, directly upon those with whom he lived, and indirectly 1 Note, P. 68. 2 p. x., "Shakespeare and Ben Jonson." 8 List of Periodicals, 16-19, p. xxx. letters. on the whole literary world, was altogether without a parallel. His colloquial talents were indeed of the highest order. He had strong sense, quick discernment, Johnson's wit, humour, immense knowledge of literature and primacy in 5 of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes. As respected style, he spoke far better than he wrote. Every sentence which dropped from his lips was as correct in structure as the most nicely balanced period of the Rambler. But in his talk there were no pompous Io triads, and little more than a fair proportion of words in osity and ation. All was simplicity, ease, and vigour. He uttered his short, weighty, and pointed sentences with a power of voice, and a justness and energy of emphasis, of which the effect was rather increased than 15 diminished by the rollings of his huge form, and by the asthmatic gaspings and puffings in which the peals of his eloquence generally ended. Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling to sit down to his desk prevent him from giving instruction or entertainment orally. To dis20 cuss questions of taste, of learning, of casuistry, in language so exact and so forcible that it might have been printed without the alteration of a word, was to him no exertion, but a pleasure. He loved, as he said, to fold his legs and have his talk out. He was ready to bestow 25 the overflowings of his full mind on anybody who would start a subject, on a fellow-passenger in a stage-coach, or on the person who sate at the same table with him in an eating house. But his conversation was nowhere so brilliant and striking as when he was surrounded by a few 30 friends, whose abilities and knowledge enabled them, as he once expressed it, to send him back every ball that he |