one main ingredient in Miss Seward's mixture is Platonic love, which cannot be referred to either of the three categories. Her error lay in not adding a fourth ingredient, the admiration which Johnson undoubtedly felt for the admitted good qualities of Mrs. Thrale. But the lady was nearer the truth than the reviewer, when he proceeds in this strain:

"We take an entirely different view at once of the character and the feelings of Johnson. Rude, uncouth, arrogant as he was - spoilt as he was, which is far worse, by flattery and toadying and the silly homage of inferior worshippers-selfish as he was in his eagerness for small enjoyments and disregard of small attentions

that which lay at the very bottom of his character, that which constitutes the great source of his power in life, and connects him after death with the hearts of all of us, is his spirit of imaginative romance. He was romantic in almost all things-in politics, in religion, in his musings on the supernatural world, in friendship for men, and in love for women."

"Such was his fancied 'padrona,' his mistress,' his 'Thralia dulcis,' a compound of the bright lady of fashion and the ideal Urania who rapt his soul into spheres of perfection."

Imaginative romance in politics, in religion, and in musings on the supernatural world, is here only another term for prejudice, intolerance, bigotry, and credulity for rabid Toryism, High Church doctrines verging on Romanism, and a confirmed belief in ghosts. Im

aginative romance in love and friendship is an elevating, softening, and refining influence, which, especially when it forms the basis of character, cannot co-exist with habitual rudeness, uncouthness, arrogance, love of toadying, selfishness, and disregard of what Johnson himself called the minor morals. Equally heterogeneous is the " compound of the bright lady of fashion and the ideal Urania." A goddess in crinoline would be a semi-mundane creature at best; and the image unluckily suggests that Johnson was unphilosophically, not to say vulgarly, fond of rank, fashion, and their appendages.

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His imagination, far from being of the richest or highest kind, was insufficient for the attainment of dramatic excellence, was insufficient even for the nobler parts of criticism. Nor had he much to boast of in the way of delicacy of perception or sensibility. His strength lay in his understanding; his most powerful weapon was argument: his grandest quality was his good sense.

Thurlow, speaking of the choice of a successor to Lord Mansfield, said, "I hesitated long between the intemperance of Kenyon, and the corruption of Buller; not but what there was a d- d deal of corruption in Kenyon's intemperance, and a dd deal of intemperance in Buller's corruption." Just so, we may hesitate long between the romance and the worldliness of Johnson, not but what there was a d- -d deal of romance in his worldliness, and a d▬▬d deal of worldliness in his romance.

The late Lord Alvanley, whose heart was as inflammable as his wit was bright, used to tell how a successful rival in the favour of a married dame offered to retire from the field for 500l., saying, “I am a younger son her husband does not give dinners, and they have no country house: no liaison suits me that does not comprise both." At the risk of provoking Mr. Carlyle's anathema, I now avow my belief that Johnson was, nay, boasted of being, open to similar influences; and as for his "ideal Uranias," no man past seventy idealises women with whom he has been corresponding for years about his or their "natural history," to whom he sends recipes for "lubricity of the bowels," with an assurance that it has had the best effect upon his own.*

Rough language, too, although not incompatible with affectionate esteem, can hardly be reconciled with imaginative romance

"Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love,
But why did you kick me down stairs ? "

"His ugly old wife," says the reviewer, "was an angel." Yes, an angel so far as exalted language could make her one; and he had always half-a-dozen angels or goddesses on his list. "Je change d'objet, mais la

* Letters, vol. ii. p. 397. The letter containing the recipe actually begins "My dear Angel." Had Johnson forgotten Swift's lines on Celia ? or the repudiation of the divine nature by Ermodotus, which occurs twice in Plutarch?

The late Lord Melbourne complained that two ladies of quality, sisters, told him too much of their "natural history."

passion reste." For this very reason, I repeat, his affection for Mrs. Piozzi was not a deep, devoted, or absorbing feeling at any time; and the gloom which settled upon the evening of his days was owing to his infirmities and his dread of death, not to the loosening of cherished ties, nor to the compelled solitude of a confined dwelling in Bolt Court. The plain matter of fact is that, during the last two years of his life, he was seldom a month together at his own house, unless when the state of his health prevented him from enjoying the hospitality of his friends. When the fatal marriage was announced, he was planning what Boswell calls a jaunt into the country; and in a letter dated Lichfield, Oct. 4, 1784, he says: "I passed the first part of the summer at Oxford (with Dr. Adams); afterwards I went to Lichfield, then to Ashbourne (Dr. Taylor's), and a week ago I returned to Lichfield."

In the journal which he kept for Dr. Brocklesby, he writes, Oct. 20: "The town is my element; there are my friends, there are my books to which I have not yet bid farewell, and there are my amusements. Sir Joshua told me long ago that my vocation was to public life; and I hope still to keep my station, till God shall bid me Go in peace." Boswell reports him saying about this time, "Sir, I look upon every day to be lost when I do not make a new acquaintance."

After another visit to Dr. Adams, at Pembroke College, he returned on the 16th Nov. to London, where he died on the 13th Dec. 1784. The proximate cause of his death was dropsy; and there is not the smallest

sign of its having been accelerated or embittered by unkindness or neglect.

Whoever has accompanied me thus far will be fully qualified to form an independent opinion of Lord Macaulay's dashing summary of Mrs. Piozzi's imputed illtreatment of Johnson:

"Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The infirmities of age were coming fast upon him. That inevitable event of which he never thought without horror was brought near to him; and his whole life was darkened by the shadow of death. He had often to pay the cruel price of longevity. Every year he lost what could never be replaced. The strange dependants to whom he had given shelter, and to whom, in spite of their faults, he was strongly attached by habit, dropped off one by one; and, in the silence of his home, he regretted even the noise of their scolding matches. The kind and generous Thrale was no more; and it would have been well if his wife had been laid beside him. But she survived to be the laughing-stock of those who had envied her, and to draw from the eyes of the old man who had loved her beyond any thing in the world, tears far more bitter than he would have shed over her grave.

“With some estimable, and many agreeable qualities, she was not made to be independent. The control of a mind more steadfast than her own was necessary to her respectability. While she was restrained by her husband, a man of sense and firmness, indulgent to her taste in trifles, but always the undisputed master