son wrote the Prologue spoken by Garrick at Drury-Lane Theatre, 1750, on the performance of the Mask of Comus, for the benefit of Milton's granddaughter." Dr. Towers is not free from prejudice; but, as Shakspeare has it," He begets a temperance to give it smoothness." He is therefore entitled to a dispassionate answer. When Johnson wrote the prologue, it does not appear that he was aware of the malignant artifices practised by Lauder. In the postscript to Johnson's preface, a subscription is proposed for relieving the granddaughter of the author of Paradise Lost. Dr. Towers will agree that this shows Johnson's alacrity in doing good. That alacrity showed itself again in the letter printed in the European Magazine, January, 1785, and there said to have appeared originally in the General Advertiser, 4th April, 1750, by which the public were invited to embrace the opportunity of paying a just regard to the illustrious dead, united with the pleasure of doing good to the living. The letter adds, "To assist industrious indigence, struggling with distress and debilitated by age, is a display of virtue, and an acquisition of happiness and honour. Whoever, therefore, would be thought capable of pleasure in reading the works of our incomparable Milton, and not so destitute of gratitude as to refuse to lay out a trifle, in a rational and elegant entertainment, for the benefit of his living remains, for the exercise of their own virtue, the increase of their reputation, and the consciousness of doing good, should appear at Drury-Lane Theatre tomorrow, April 5, when Coмus will be performed for the benefit of Mrs. Elizabeth Foster, granddaughter to the author, and the only surviving branch of his family. Nota bene, there will be a new prologue on the occasion, written by the author of Irene, and spoken by Mr. Garrick." The man who had thus exercised himself to serve the granddaughter, cannot be supposed to have entertained personal

malice to the grandfather. It is true that the malevolence of Lauder, as well as the impostures of Archibald Bower, were fully detected by the labours in the cause of truth of the Rev. Dr. Douglass, the late Lord Bishop of Salisbury. But the pamphlet entitled "Milton vindicated from the charge of Plagiarism, brought against him by Mr. Lauder, and Lauder himself convicted of several Forgeries and gross Impositions on the Public, by John Douglass, M.A., Rector of Eaton Constantine, Salop," was not published till the year 1751. In that work, p. 77, Dr. Douglass says, "It is to be hoped, nay, it is expected, that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious sentiments and inimitable style point out the author of Lauder's preface and postscript, will no longer allow A MAN to plume himself with his feathers who appears so little to have deserved his assistance; an assistance which I am persuaded would never have been communicated, had there been the least suspicion of those facts which I have been the instrument of conveying to the world." We have here a contemporary testimony to the integrity of Dr. Johnson throughout the whole of that vile transaction. What was the consequence of the requisition made by Dr. Douglass? Johnson, whose ruling passion may be said to have been the love of truth, convinced Lauder that it would be more for his interest to make a full confession of his guilt, than to stand forth the convicted champion of a lie; and for this purpose he drew up, in the strongest terms, a recantation, in a letter to the Rev. Mr. Douglass, which Lauder signed, and published in the year 1761. That piece will remain a lasting memorial of the abhorrence with which Johnson beheld a violation of truth. Mr. Nichols, whose attachment to his illustrious friend was unwearied, showed him, in 1780, a book called "Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton," in which the affair of Lauder was renewed with virulence, and a poetical scale in the

Literary Magazine, 1758 (when Johnson had ceased to write in that collection), was urged as an additional proof of deliberate malice. He read the libellous passage with attention, and instantly wrote on the margin, "In the business of Lauder I was deceived, partly by thinking the man too frantic to be fraudulent. Of the poetical scale quoted from the Magazine I am not the author. I fancy it was put in after I had quitted that work; for I not only did not write it, but I do not remember it." As a critic and a scholar, Johnson was willing to receive what numbers, at the time, believed to be true information: when he found that the whole was a forgery, he renounced all connexion with the author.

In March, 1752, he felt a severe stroke of affliction in the death of his wife. The last number of the Rambler, as already mentioned, was on the 14th of that month. The loss of Mrs. Johnson was then approaching, and probably was the cause that put an end to those admirable periodical essays. It appears that she died on the 28th of March: in a memorandum at the foot of his Prayers and Meditations, that is called her Dying Day. She was buried at Bromley, under the care of Dr. Hawkesworth. Johnson placed a Latin inscription on her tomb, in which he celebrated her beauty. With the singularity of his prayers for 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

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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 be; 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. 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 originates in piety and benevolence." These sentences, extracted from the Rev. Mr. Strahan's preface, if they are not a justification, are at least a beautiful apology.

It

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 impor

tant 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 had prepared an instrument, which might be called an epitome or miniature of the terraqueous globe, showing, 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 Newton; 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, 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 expense, died in a short time after, a melancholy instance of unrewarded merit. His daughter possessed uncommon talents, 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 Square. 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. 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

See Gentleman's Magazine for Nov. and Dec., 1787. † See Gentleman's Magazine for 1787, p. 1042.