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his deceased wife, from that time to the end of his days, the world is sufficiently acquainted. On Easter-day, 22d April, 1764, his memorandum says: Thought on Tetty, poor dear

Tetty with my eyes full. Went to Church. After sermon I recommended Tetty in a prayer by herself; and my father, mother, brother, and Bathurst, in another. I did it only once, so far as it might be lawful for me.' In a prayer, January 23, 1759, the day on which his mother was buried, he commends, as far as may be lawful, her soul to God, imploring for her whatever is most beneficial to her in her present state. In this habit he persevered to the end of his days. The Rev. Mr. Strahan, the editor of the Prayers and Meditations, observes,' That Johnson, on some occasions, prays that the Almighty may have had mercy on his wife and Mr. Thrale: evidently supposing their sentence to have been already passed in the Divine Mind; and, by consequence, proving, that he had no belief in a state of purgatory, and no reason for praying for the dead that could impeach the sincerity of his profession as a Protestant.' Mr. Strahan adds, 'That, in praying for the regretted tenants of the grave, Johnson conformed to a practice which has been retained by many learned members of the Established Church, though the Liturgy no longer admits it. If where the tree falleth, there it shall be3; if our state, at the close of life, is to be the measure of our final sentence, then prayers for the dead, being visibly fruitless, can be regarded only as the vain oblations of superstition. But of all superstitions this, perhaps, is one of the least unamiable, and most incident to a good mind. If our sensations of kindness be intense, those, whom we have revered and loved, death cannot wholly seclude from our concern. It is true, for the reason just mentioned, such evidences of our surviving affection may be thought ill-judged; but surely they are generous, and some natural tenderness is due even to a superstition, which thus

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originates in piety and benevolence. These sentences, extracted from the Rev. Mr. Strahan's preface, if they are not a full justification, are, at least, a beautiful apology. It will not be improper to add what Johnson himself has said on the subject. Being asked by Mr. Boswell, what he thought of purgatory, as believed by the Roman Catholics? His answer was, 'It is a very harmless doctrine. They are of opinion, that the generality of mankind are neither so obstinately wicked as to deserve everlasting punishment; nor so good as to merit being admitted into the society of blessed spirits; and, therefore, that God is graciously pleased to allow a middle state, where they may be purified by certain degrees of suffering. You see [Sir] there is nothing unreasonable in this'; [BOSWELL. But then, Sir, their masses for the dead?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir] if it be once established that there are souls in purgatory, it is as proper to pray for them, as for our brethren of mankind, who are yet in this life".' This was Dr. Johnson's guess into futurity; and to guess is the utmost that man can do. Shadows, clouds, and darkness, rest upon it3.

Mrs. Johnson left a daughter, Lucy Porter, by her first husband. She had contracted a friendship with Mrs. Anne Williams, the daughter of Zachary Williams, a physician of eminence in South Wales, who had devoted more than thirty years of a long life to the study of the longitude, and was thought to have made great advances towards that important discovery. His letters to Lord Halifax, and the Lords of the Admiralty, partly corrected and partly written by Dr. Johnson, are still extant in the hands of Mr. Nichols *. We there find Dr. Williams, in the eighty-third year of his age, stating, that he

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had prepared an instrument, which might be called an epitome or miniature of the terraqueous globe, shewing, with the assistance of tables constructed by himself, the variations of the magnetic needle, and ascertaining the longitude for the safety of navigation'. It appears that this scheme had been referred to Sir Isaac Newton2; but that great philosopher excusing himself on account of his advanced age, all applications were useless till 1751, when the subject was referred, by order of Lord Anson 3, to Dr. Bradley, the celebrated professor of Astronomy. His report was unfavourable, though it allows that a considerable progress had been made. Dr. Williams, after all his labour and expence, died in a short time after, a melancholy instance of unrewarded merit 5. His daughter possessed uncommon talents,

''It was no new thing then when Columbus, as he sailed westward, marked the variation [of the needle] proceeding from the north-east more and more westerly; but it was a revelation when he came to a position where the magnetic north and the north star stood in conjunction, as they did on this 13th of September, 1492. As he still moved westerly the magnetic line was found to move farther and farther away from the pole, as it had before the 13th approached it. To an observer of Columbus's quick perceptions, there was a ready guess to possess his mind. This inference was that this line of no variation was a meridian line, and that divergences from it east and west might have a regularity which would be found to furnish a method of ascertaining longitude far easier and surer than tables or water-clocks.' Justin Winsor's Christopher Columbus, 1891, p. 200.

According to the Gentleman's Magazine, p. 1042, in 1729; but Newton died in 1727.

3 First Commissioner of the Admiralty; ante, p. 195.

James Bradley, Savilian Profes

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and, though blind, had an alacrity of mind that made her conversation agreeable, and even desirable. To relieve and appease melancholy reflections, Johnson took her home to his house in Gough-square1. In 1755, Garrick gave her a benefit-play, which produced two hundred pounds. In 1766, she published, by subscription, a quarto volume of Miscellanies, and increased her little stock to three hundred pounds 3. That fund, with Johnson's protection, supported her through the remainder of her life *.

During the two years in which the Rambler was carried on, the Dictionary proceeded by slow degrees. In May 1752, having composed a prayer preparatory to his return from tears and sorrow to the duties of life, he resumed his grand design, and went on with vigour, giving, however, occasional assistance to his friend Dr. Hawkesworth in the Adventurer, which began soon after the Rambler was laid aside. Some of the most valuable essays in that collection were from the pen of Johnson 6. The Dictionary was completed towards the end of 1754; and, Cave being then no more', it was a mortification to the author

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and follies of men.' Warton's Pope's Works, ix. 345.

According to Percy, 'Hawkesworth usually sent Johnson each paper to prefix a motto before it was printed.' Anderson's Johnson, ed. 1815, p. 190. Chalmers (British Essayists, vol. xix. Preface, p. 38) states that 'Johnson revised his Adventurers for the second edition with the same attention he bestowed on the Rambler. This is untrue; scarcely a change can be found.

7 Cave died on January 10, 1754. Letters, i. 56, n. 2. According to the Life of Johnson, published by Kearsley in 1785, p. 47, Cave was the husband of the woman who fraudulently made a purse for herself' (Life, iv. 319). The money she had laid out in India bonds.

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of that noble addition to our language, that his old friend did not live to see the triumph of his labours. In May 1755, that great work was published'. Johnson was desirous that it should come from one who had obtained academical honours; and for that purpose, his friend the Rev. Thomas Warton obtained for him, in the preceding month of February, a diploma for a master's degree from the University of Oxford. Garrick, on the publication of the Dictionary, wrote the following lines.

'Talk of war with a Briton, he'll boldly advance,
That one English soldier can [will] beat ten of France.
Would we alter the boast from the sword to the pen,
Our odds are still greater, still greater our men.

In the deep mines of science though Frenchmen may toil,

Can their strength be compar'd to Locke, Newton, or [and] Boyle?

Let them rally their heroes, send forth all their pow'rs,

Their versemen and prosemen, then match them with ours.

First Shakspeare and Milton [Milton and Shakspeare], like Gods

in the fight,

Have put their whole drama and epic to flight.
In satires, epistles, and odes, would they cope?
Their numbers retreat before Dryden and Pope.
And Johnson well arm'd, like a hero of yore,

Has beat Forty French, and will beat Forty more3.

It is, perhaps, needless to mention, that Forty was the number of the French Academy, at the time when their Dictionary was published to settle their language *.

I

Life, i. 290, n. I. I have seen a letter from Mr. John P. Anderson of the British Museum, the author of the Bibliography at the end of Colonel F. Grant's Johnson, to Mr. J. Dewitt Miller, of Philadelphia, a great Johnsonian collector, in which it is stated:-'The first edition appeared on April 17, 1755. What I called a second edition was a weekly re-issue, same type, &c., which began on June 17 of the same year. The second edition appeared in 1760, in 2 vols. octavo. I have discovered this from the advertise

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