of envy I speak it, who never shall have even a thatched roof of my own, nor gather a strawberry but in Covent Garden."

His spirits became more and more depressed, full of regrets that he had not accomplished more as a poet.

Long a sufferer from the gout, he died at last from that painful disease, after six days of intense suffering, at the age of fifty-five.

By his own request he was buried near his mother, to whom he was so tenderly attached; and, by a wish expressed in his will, the sum of ten pounds was given to the poor in his parish on the day of his funeral.

He was a profound scholar, perhaps the most learned man in Europe; indeed, his fund of knowledge seemed inexhaustible. He was well read in every branch of history; in metaphysics, morals, criticism, politics, and natural history; was ardently devoted to painting, music, architecture, and yet found time to devote to heraldry and antiquities. He was even an expert in the science of cookery.

Mackintosh says, "He was the first discoverer of the beauties of nature in England, and has marked out the course of every picturesque journey that can be made in it."

Mason declares that, "excepting the pure mathematics, and the studies dependent on that science, there was hardly any part of human learning in which he had not acquired a competent skill; in most of them a consummate mastery."

He was a perfect master of the English language in prose as well as poetry.

Cowper said: "I have been reading Gray's works, and think him sublime. I once thought Swift's letters the best that could be written; but I like Gray's better. His humor or wit, or whatever it is to be called, is never ill

natured or offensive, and yet, I think, equally poignant with the dean's."

He certainly deserves a most distinguished position, and, after Milton and Shakespeare, Chaucer and Spenser, there is perhaps no one with a better claim to the fifth place among our English poets than Thomas Gray.

"Johnson, to be sure, has a roughness in his manner; but no man alive has a more tender heart."

NEARLY a hundred years ago, in a retired court in Fleet Street, London, might be found a little family composed of individuals so odd, grotesque, and unique, that it would be impossible to find their parallel in the history of civilized society.

Let us look in upon them at breakfast, about ten o'clock in the forenoon. The central figure possesses a colossal frame, long, shambling legs, a repulsive face, scarred with scrofula, one eye sightless and disfigured, the other feeble and blinking; his.clothes seem to have been hung upon him as rags are wrapped about a scarecrow, his shirt-collar loose, the linen of which originally whitebut here imagination must come to our aid;-the little

black wig all askew, his knee-buckles and shoeties flutter-
ing as he moves, his whole appearance showing utter in-
difference to the elegancies of life. He gulps down his
tea as though his throat were the race-way of an ordinary
mill. All his motions are clumsy, heavy, and awkward.
No stranger could begin to guess correctly who or what
he was.
Nothing about his person showed that the
greatest intellect of his age dwelt in that unsightly body.
His household are equally unattractive. An humble doc-
tor, poor in purse, slight in skill, threadbare in dress, but
of spotless character, served as cup-bearer to the lord of
the mansion, who has thus characterized him in a poetic
tribute of surpassing beauty:

"In misery's darkest caverns known,
His useful care was ever nigh,

Where hopeless anguish poured its groan,

And lonely want retired to die.

The other inmates of this singular abode were a poor, blind woman, entirely dependent upon the charity of the owner, yet peevish, querulous, and impudent; another decayed gentlewoman, also old and friendless, sharing the bounty of the householder, and a single negro-servant, who was "Jack-of-all-trades."

About four o'clock in the afternoon, you might have seen the same ungainly figure pacing the streets of the city, in quest of a dinner at the "Mitre." He moves with an absent, melancholy air, with a heavy tread and rolling gait, jostling the porters and market-women as he passes, muttering strange thoughts, like a madman, touching every post as he goes, and, on arriving at his place of

destination, stopping a moment to decide which foot to place first on the threshold, in order to secure a good omen and cordial welcome. Seated at table, with two or three admirers, he devotes himself to the wants of the inner man, giving no heed to what those around him say or think. He swallows his food with the ravenous eagerness of a famished wolf. After his repast, he gives himself to the entertainment of his friends. They hang upon his lips, every word is treasured in memory, or written down upon the spot. If at midnight, of the same day, you were to look into the most brilliant literary club which ever met within the precincts of the first city in the world, you would find the same singular personage in the foreground of a group of eager and excited listeners, discoursing in tones of authority, like Jove uttering his unalterable decrees to a "council of gods on Olympus." If any one fails to see the force or application of one of these dicta, and ventures to say so, you hear a gruff growl, followed by a thunderous "Sir, it is my business to give you arguments, not to give you brains!”—and the questioner is knocked down with the butt-end of the pistol. Such was SAMUEL JOHNSON, the greatest genius, the most original man of his age. Thanks to his most devoted admirer, Boswell, we now know almost as much of his life as did he himself, and can follow him from his cradle to his grave.

His father was a poor bookseller in the provincial town of Lichfield; a man of apparent good health, yet constitutionally "blue," who used to read every book displayed on his stall, but never made much by selling them. He must have been punctual, for little Samuel was baptized on the very day of his birth. He was an awkward, clumsy child, with features originally good, but distorted by disease. There was a silly superstition in those days, that if a person so afflicted could be touched by the hand