Great lith in their neck!"1 Years they were with him. resentment (and no wonder) From Auchinleck the travellers returned by easy stages to Edinburgh, which they reached after an absence of eighty-three days. The personally conducted tour had been an unqualified success. In spite of the rainy weather and other inevitable discomforts, Johnson had enjoyed the novelty of the journey-now on horseback, now in a coach, and now by boat, the constant change of scenery, the study of new men and new manners, and the hospitable welcome he had received from a nation whom he had been decrying all his life. Nor was he ungrateful to Boswell for his care and thoughtfulness. "It is very convenient to travel with him," he writes, "for there is no house where he is not received with kindness and respect. He has better faculties than I imagined: more justness of discernment." Later on, he declared emphatically that "it was the pleasantest journey he had ever made." Johnson was probably more pleased with the Scotch than 1 Dr Johnson would probably have sometimes broken by foxhunters." Halliwell: One person especially had viewed the Highland tour with strong disapproval. "My father," writes Boswell, "is most unhappily dissatisfied with me. He harps on my going over Scotland with a brute (think how shockingly erroneous!), and wandering, or some such phrase, in London." It must be admitted that the old judge had solid reasons for dissatisfaction. He had been, on the whole, a kind and indulgent father. He had given Jamie an expensive education, had indulged him in a foreign tour, had made him a handsome allowance, and had paid his debts (£1000). In return for this his son had been idle, extravagant, and dissipated; had wasted his time in London instead of following his profession at Edinburgh, and had attached himself to a "dominie" who had bearded Lord Auchinleck in his own castle, and upheld to his face the pestilent heresies of Episcopacy and the divine right of kings! James Boswell was, in fact, in a somewhat ticklish position, for his father had made 8 second defined lith, “a small joint in the neck, The word is Anglo-Saxon, according to "Was never arrowe that greeved hym, Ne that him touched lythe nor lyme." marriage, and could, if he chose, disinherit James, and settle the estates on his second son, David. Lord Hailes, an old family friend, did his best to smooth over matters, and the birth of a son, whom Boswell diplomatically christened Alexander, did something more to bring about a reconciliation. But one thing Lord Auchinleck would not hear of-in spite of many entreaties-namely, that Boswell should try his fortunes at the English Bar. Boswell, however, continued to visit London periodically, and kept up his intimacy with Johnson. But there are frequent gaps in the journal of these later years, and he often writes that he has kept no notes of the conversation that passed. This was partly, perhaps, from indolence he was growing weary of the incessant strain involved in listening and recording; but it was, we fear, mainly due to his habits of insobriety. If he did not keep in the straight path, it was not from lack of good advice from his excellent mentor. "Clear your mind of cant: don't trust to impressions, work more and drink less, get as much force of mind as you can-live on what you have, and, if you can, live on less." But, alas! the whole book of Ecclesiastes is of little use or efficacy in such cases. By his father's death he became laird of Auchinleck in 1782, and there is a touching letter from Johnson soon after that event: "I should like to come and have a cottage in your park, toddle about, live as mostly on milk, and be taken care of by Mrs Boswell." Johnson himself was growing old, and afflicted with disease. His last and many think-his best work, The Lives of the Poets,' was written by him between the age of sixty-eight and seventytwo, when his mind was still as strong as ever but that was a final effort. He became a martyr to dropsy and asthma, and it was then that Boswell showed that, in spite of absence and neglect, he retained much of his old affection and devotion to his master. He proposed that the Government should be asked to increase Johnson's pension, that he might be able to winter in Italy, and thereby prolong his life. Sir Joshua Reynolds cordially approved of the scheme, and the Chancellor (Lord Thurlow) promised to give it his "best support." Then it was decided to inform Johnson of what had been done. "I hastened to Johnson, and was told by him that he was much better to-day. BOSWELL-'I am very anxious about you, sir, and parfor the winter, which, I believe, is ticularly that you should go to Italy your own wish.' JOHNSON 'It is, sir.' BOSWELL-'You have no ob jection, I presume, but the money it would require.' JOHNSON-'Why, no, sir.' Upon which I gave to him a particular account of what had been done, and read to him the Lord Chancellor's letter. He listened with great attention, and then warmly said,This is taking prodigious pains about a man.' O, sir,' said with most sincere affection, 'your friends would do everything for you.' He paused-grew more and more agitated-till tears started into his eyes, and exclaimed with fervent emotion, 'God bless you all.' I was could not describe what he had not seen, and he was himself ill in Scotland when the end so affected that I also shed tears. After a short time, he renewed and extended his grateful benediction'God bless you all for Christ's sake. We both remained for some time came. "Johnson feared death unable to speak. Then he left the room." Johnson's But the earnest appeal of friends, though backed up by the Chancellor, was rejected by the Government, for Pitt never granted a pension or a favour to a man a pension or a favour to a man of letters. And though Thur. low offered to advance the sum required (£500), Johnson, who had been deeply hurt and mortified, refused the offer, and the scheme was dropped. If carried out, it could hardly have prolonged his life. That valuable life was now drawing to its close. Boswell met Johnson for the last time at a dinner at Sir Joshua's, on June 30, 1784. "I accompanied him in Sir Joshua Reynolds' coach to the entry of Bolt Court. He asked me whether I would not go with him to his house; I declined it, from an apprehension that my spirits would sink. We bade adieu to each other affectionately in the carriage. When he had got down upon the foot - pavement, he called out, Fare you well'; and, without looking back, sprang away, with a kind of pathetic briskness, if I may use that expression, which seemed to indicate a struggle to conceal uneasiness, and impressed me with a foreboding of our long, long separation." The dignity and simplicity of the two passages quoted above can hardly be surpassed. They are in striking contrast to the effusive and often boisterous style of his letters to Temple, and in contrast also to his slipshod and inadequate account of Johnson's last hours. But he [he says], but he feared nothing else in the world, not even the occasions of death." His physical courage was indisputable, but he had a Christian's dread of "the Terrors and Eternities." He endured his sufferings with exemplary patience, his only prayer being that "he might render back his soul unclouded to his Maker." Almost his last words were addressed to a young girl, who had found her way to his bedside to ask his benediction: "God bless you, my dear"; and then murmuring Jam moriturus, he sank into a doze, and soon afterwards his mighty spirit passed away. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, "and," says Mr Elwin, "of him may be repeated with literal truth the lines which Tickell wrote on the burial of Addison "Ne'er to these chambers, where the mighty rest, Since their foundation, came a nobler guest. In Johnson, Boswell lost what had practically been the sheetanchor of his life. Now that the controlling influence of that masterful personality had ceased to be, his character deteriorated. The "moral fences," of which he speaks in one of his letters, were hopelessly broken down, and the eleven years during which he survived Johnson are a melancholy record of "domestic misfortunes, broken health, and disappointed ambition.' We do not care to dwell upon the final stages of his decline and fallhis disastrous failure at the English Bar, his abortive attempts to secure a place in Parliament, his debts and difficulties, and (to use a mild term) his convivial excesses. He died in 1795, in his fiftyfifth year, when he had hardly touched the confines of old age. Time has, on the whole, dealt gently with Boswell's memory. His faults and foibles have been condoned or forgotten, and men have, as a rule, only cared to remember his undeniably good qualities both of head and heart, and the gratitude which they Owe him for his matchless biography of Johnson. For, before he died, he had completed and published that immortal work which had been been the dream and ambition of his youth, and the engrossing occupation of five years towards the end of his life. He had spared neither time nor trouble on his magnum opus. He had sifted the mass of available materials, selecting the best and throwing aside the "surplusage" with that rare discrimination to which we have alluded before; he collected anecdotes and impressions from Johnson's surviving friends-Bennet Langton, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr Adams, Dr Taylor, and others-and the result had been a literary masterpiece which has associated his name indelibly with that of his hero. By a kind of prophetic instinct he has demanded of his readers that his own character should be dissociated from his work. "A man who has been able to furnish a book which has been approved by the world, has established himself as a respectable character in distant society, without any danger of that character being lessened by the observation of his weaknesses. . . Such an author, when in his hours of gloom and discontent, may have the consolation to think that his writings are at that very time giving pleasure to numbers; and such an author may cherish the hope of being remembered after death." This hope, to which he so touchingly refers, has been more than realised. Who cares to remember, as he turns over those delightful pages and passes from one dramatic scene to another, that the writer was bibulous and dissipated? We only think of that rare combination of talent and industry which has given us a life-like portrait of a noble character; and our only feeling is one of gratitude and admiration for the author. James Boswell has, indeed, well earned his immortality— THE NEW JUNE. BY HENRY NEWBOLT. LIII.-A DOG AND A TRAITOR. IN the hands of Northumber- the least inferiority of rank. land, a violent and self-seeking Richard, on the other hand, adventurer, the negotiations behaved with a dignity so were much curtailed. On the perfect that he seemed almost 19th Richard came to Flint to be unconscious of any with the last few friends who change in his own position remained to him. There were or Hereford's since they last but four of them-the Earls parted. Beside so exquisite a of Salisbury and Gloucester, piece of acting the cunning Bishop Merke of Carlisle, and of his enemy showed vulgar John Maudelyn, the king's and laborious. private secretary. Hereford had kept his own counsel, and up to the moment of their arrival no one had any idea of the terms upon which they came. The place was surrounded by a huge army, but there were no troops in the courtyard where Richard was waiting. When Henry arrived, Westmoreland, Stafford, and the rest were near him as before, but they drew instinctively to one side of the entrance to the keep, so as to stand apart from Surrey and Exeter, who had been brought, rather to their own surprise, to be present at the meeting. The arrangements were all such as would have been appropriate to the entertainment of one monarch by another. Henry himself was as smiling, as unctuously crafty, as ever. He advanced to meet the king, bowed twice, and addressed him by his title, but did not in any other way acknowledge to To the spectators the scene was one of absorbing interest, for its exact meaning was still in doubt, and upon that meaning hung the life and fortune of every one of them. The hostile parties drew farther away from each other, right and left of the great stone doorway, and conversed by signs and monosyllables while they watched their two leaders pacing slowly up and down the long courtyard together, and talking with the calm voices and polite gestures of men engaged in friendly negotiation. Henry's partisans appeared to be the more anxious: they had no bond with their chief, and no hold over him, except the bare material self-interests on each side. His intentions had never been confided to them; and though they had no reason to doubt the issue, it was still vague, and their stake was too great for indifference. But Richard's friends had al |