away to town. Time, however, discovered that he translated from the French a Rambler, which had been taken from the English without acknowledgment. Upon this discovery Mr Murphy thought it right to make his excuses to Dr Johnson. He went next day, and found him covered with soot, like a chimney-sweeper, in a little room, as if he had been acting Lungs in the Alchymist, making ether. This being told by Mr Murphy in company, Come, come, said Dr Johnson, the story is black enough; but it was a happy day that brought you first to my house." After this first visit, the author of this narrative by degrees grew intimate with Dr Johnson. The first striking sentence that he heard from him, was in a few days after the publication of Lord Bolingbroke's posthumous works. Mr Garrick asked him, "If he had seen them ?" "Yes, I have seen them.' "What do you think of them?" "Think of them!" He made a long pause, and then replied: "Think of them! A scoundrel and a coward! A scoundrel, who spent his life in charging a gun against Christianity; and a coward, who was afraid of hearing the report of his own gun, but left half a crown to a hungry Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death." His mind, at this time strained and over-laboured by constant exertion, called for an interval of repose and indolence. But indolence was the time of danger: it was then that his spirits, not employed abroad, turned with inward hostility against himself. His reflections on his own life and conduct were always severe; and, wishing to be immaculate, he destroyed his own peace by unnecessary scruples. He tells us, that when he

surveyed his past life, he discovered nothing but a barren waste of time, with some disorders of body, and disturbances of mind, very near to madness. His life, he says, from his earliest years, was wasted in a morning bed; and his reigning sin was a general sluggishness, to which he was always inclined, and, in part of his life, almost compelled, by morbid melancholy, and weariness of mind. This was his constitutional malady, derived, perhaps, from his father, who was, at times, overcast with a gloom that bordered on insanity. When to this it is added, that Johnson, about the age of twenty, drew up a description of his infirmities for Dr Swinfen, at that time an eminent physician in Staffordshire; and received an answer to his letter, importing, that the symptoms indicated a future privation of reason; who can wonder that he was troubled with melancholy and dejection of spirit? An apprehension of the worst calamity that can befal human nature hung over him all the rest of his life, like the sword of the tyrant suspended over his guest. In his sixtieth year he had a mind to write the history of his melancholy; but he desisted, not knowing whether it would not too much disturb him. In a Latin poem, however, to which he has prefixed as a title, ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ, he has left a picture of himself, drawn with as much truth, and as firm a hand, as can be seen in the portraits of Hogarth or Sir Joshua Reynolds. The learned reader will find the original poem in this volume; and it is hoped, that a translation, or rather, imitation, of so curious a piece, will not be improper in this place.

KNOW YOURSELF.

(AFTER REVISING AND ENLARGING THE ENGLISH LEXICON, OR DICTIONARY.)

WHEN Scaliger, whole years of labour past,.
Beheld his Lexicon complete at last,

And weary of his task, with wond'ring eyes,
Saw from words pil'd on words a fabric rise,
He curs'd the industry, inertly strong,
In creeping toil that could persist so long;
And if, enrag'd he cried, Heav'n meant to shed
Its keenest vengeance on the guilty head,
The drudgery of words the damn'd would know,
Doom'd to write Lexicons in endless woe.*

Yes, you had cause, great Genius! to repent;
"You lost good days, that might be better spent ;"
You well might grudge the hours of ling'ring pain,
And view your learned labours with disdain.

To you were giv'n the large expanded mind,
The flame of genius, and the taste refin'd.

'Twas yours on eagle wings aloft to soar,

And amidst rolling worlds the Great First Cause explore; To fix the eras of recorded time,

And live in ev'ry age and ev'ry clime;

Record the chiefs, who propt their country's cause;

Who founded empires, and establish'd laws;

To learn whate'er the Sage with virtue fraught,

Whate'er the Muse of moral wisdom taught.

These were your quarry; these to you were known,

And the world's ample volume was your own.

Yet warn'd by me, ye pigmy Wits, beware,
Nor with immortal Scaliger compare.

* See Scaliger's Epigram on this subject, communicated without doubt by Dr Johnson. Gent. Mag. 1748, p. 8.

For me, though his example strike my view
Oh! not for me his footsteps to pursue.
Whether first Nature, unpropitious, cold,
This clay compounded in a ruder mould;
Or the slow current, loit'ring at my heart,
No gleam of wit or fancy can impart;
Whate'er the cause, from me no numbers flow,
No visions warm me, and no raptures glow.

A mind like Scaliger's, superior still, No grief could conquer, no misfortune chill. Though for the maze of words his native skies He seem'd to quit, 'twas but again to rise; To mount once more to the bright source of day, And view the wonders of th' ethereal way. The love of fame his gen'rous bosom fir'd; Each Science hail'd him, and each Muse inspir'd. For him the sons of learning trimm'd the bays, And nations grew harmonious in his praise.

My task perform'd, and all my labours o'er,
For me what lot has Fortune now in store?
The listless will succeeds, that worst disease,
The rack of indolence, the sluggish ease.
Care grows on care, and o'er my aching brain
Black Melancholy pours her morbid train.
No kind relief, no lenitive at hand,

I seek at midnight clubs, the social band;

But midnight clubs, where wit with noise conspires,
Where Comus revels, and where wine inspires,
Delight no more: I seek my lonely bed,
And call on sleep to sooth my languid head.
But sleep from these sad lids flies far away;
I mourn all night, and dread the coming day.
Exhausted, tir'd, I throw my eyes around,
To find some vacant spot on classic ground;
And soon, vain hope! I form à grand design;
Languor succeeds, and all my pow'rs decline.
If science open not her richest vein,
Without materials all our toil is vain.

A form to rugged stone when Phidias gives,
Beneath his touch a new creation lives.
Remove his marble, and his genius dies;
With nature then no breathing statue vies.

Whate'er I plan, I feel my pow'rs confin'd
By Fortune's frown, and penury of mind.

I boast no knowledge glean'd with toil and strife,
That bright reward of a well acted life.

I view myself, while reason's feeble light
Shoots a pale glimmer through the gloom of night,
While passions, error, phantoms of the brain,
And vain opinions, fill the dark domain;
A dreary void, where fears with grief combin'd
Waste all within, and desolate the mind.

What then remains? Must I in slow decline
To mute inglorious ease old age resign?
Or, bold ambition kindling in my breast,
Attempt some arduous task? Or, were it best
Brooding o'er Lexicons to pass the day,
And in that labour drudge my life away?

Such is the picture for which Dr Johnson sat to himself. He gives the prominent features of his character; his lassitude, his morbid melancholy, his love of fame, his dejection, his tavern-parties, and his wandering reveries, Vacuæ mala somnia mentis, about which so much has been written; all are painted in miniature, but in vivid colours, by his own hand. His idea of writing more Dictionaries was not merely said in verse. Mr Hamilton, who was at that time an eminent printer, and well acquainted with Dr Johnson, remembers that heengaged in a Commercial Dictionary, and, as appears by the receipts in his possession, was paid his price for several sheets; but he soon relinquished