as

said he, I enter the door of a tavern, I experience an oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude: when I am seated, I find the master courteous, and the servants obsequious to my call; anxious to know and ready to supply my wants; wine there exhilarates my spirits, and prompts me to free conversation and an interchange of discourse with those whom I most love; I dogmatize, and am contradicted, and in this conflict of opinions and sentiments I find delight." The very late hours to which Johnson had accustomed himself, and which were incompatible with the routine of a regular family, was one great motive for the assemblage of his friends beneath a tavern roof; he could there act with the independence which he loved; and to this mode of collecting his friends, though he shortly afterwards entirely relinquished the use of wine, he was partial to the close of his days.

The second relaxation to which Johnson had recourse from the fatigue of philological compilation, has given him a most exalted rank in the character of an ESSAYIST. In the year 1750, he commenced a periodical paper under the title of The Rambler; a work which, from its peculiar style and manner, and its powerful influence on language and composition, has fixed a new era in the annals of English literature,

Thirty-six years had now elapsed since the close of the eighth volume of the Spectator; a period indeed, during which, as we have already seen in the first essays of this volume, numerous attempts had been made to rival or to copy the productions of Steele and Addison. Not one, however, fully succeeded in the arduous undertaking; and of eighty-two efforts which we have enumerated, probably not more than half a dozen are, in the present day, known to have existed by other persons than those whose curiosity may have induced them to trace the literary history of their country.

any

Johnson, therefore, had not to contend with any recent productions of such acknowledged excellence as might render his attempt either presumptuous or hazardous; and in the long interval which had taken place since the retreat of the Spectator, so many changes had occurred in society, literature, and manners, that to a writer of ability and observation it became no very difficult task to impress upon periodical composition the stamp of novelty and originality.

Of these changes it may be necessary, before we enter upon the history of the publication of the Rambler, to enumerate the most material, as they will serve to throw a strong light on the scope and tendency of our author's papers.

During the reign of George II. the commercial consequence of Great Britain had rapidly increased, and had given rise to various alterations in our modes of living, and to characters which had not hitherto subsisted. Luxury and refine ment, the invariable attendants on extended commerce, had pervaded a much larger portion of society than in the days of Addison, and the mutations in the fashionable world had kept pace with the facilities of extravagance and caprice.

The dissipation and manners of the metropolis, which, during the publication of the Tatler and Spectator, had few opportunities of spreading far beyond the capital that gave them birth, possessed, towards the middle of the eighteenth century, a free and rapid access to every quarter of the kingdom; and, as Sir John Hawkins has observed, "the maid of honour and the farmer's wife put on a cap of the latest form, almost at the same instant." To the great improvements in travelling, occasioned by the universal establishment of turnpike roads, good inns, and light carriages, are we to attribute this remarkable alteration, which imparted, if not an improved, yet certainly a very novel appearance to provincial life, excited a very curious emulation, added fresh effervescence to affectation, and gave play to a new series of eccentricities and follies.

The state also both of the capital and the country had received great modification from the wide dissemination of literature; the foundation for this salutary change had been laid by Steele and Addison, and, at the period when the Rambler started into existence, its effects on society were very evident and striking. To be acquainted with letters was now no longer a disgrace to the fine gentleman; classical studies, indeed, were deemed necessary to all whose circumstances placed them above manual labour; and the ladies, to whom spelling and writing had been formerly acquisitions of great magnitude, were, in the days of Johnson, very universally partakers of the most elegant refinements of education.

To this general distribution of literary intelligence, which, at the period under consideration, not only operated strongly upon the upper and middle, but likewise on the lower ranks of society, great assistance had been given by the establishment of the Gentleman's Magazine, in 1731; a miscellany which soon acquired an unprecedented circulation, and, by affording a most respectable arena for diffident scholars and young authors, created in the English republic of letters a very ardent spirit of emulation. To the Journal of Cave was added, in the year 1749, the " Monthly

Review," the herald of a vast and increasing series of periodical criticism. These productions, still among the most respectable of their kind, have a just claim, through their influence in accelerating the dispersion of knowledge, to the formation of distinct epochs in the annals of our literature.. In the year 1750, the former had for nineteen years been contributing powerfully toward the progress of literary information; and the latter had very successfully begun a career which has gradually converted the nation into a body of critics.

Another natural consequence of a diffused taste for letters was a vast increase in the number of authors; many of whom, as will ever be the case, were notoriously inadequate to the duties of their profession. Collectively, however, their influence upon society became every day more powerful and decided; they were the directors of public opinion, and consequently their precepts and conduct became an object of serious attention. The state of literature and its disciples has, therefore, furnished Johnson with a new and fertile topic of discussion; he delighted to expatiate on the fate and fortunes, the pleasures and miseries, the vices and follies, of the sons of learning; and he has alternately launched with success the shafts of ridicule and the weapons of reproof.

VOL. IV.