be collected into volumes; which share JOHNSON afterwards sold.

The commencement of the RAMBLER was a matter of great importance with the author, as if he had foreseen that this work was hereafter to constitute his principal fame; and as he had wisely determined that his fame should rest as much on the good he had done, as on the pleasure he might afford, with his accustomed piety he composed and offered up the following prayer: entitled "Prayer on the RAM

BLER."

"ALMIGHTY God, the giver of all good things, without whose help all labour is ineffectual, and without whose grace all wisdom is. folly: grant, I beseech thee, that in this my undertaking, thy HOLY SPIRIT may not be with-held from me, but that I may promote thy glory, and the salvation both of myself and others; grant this, O LORD, for the sake of JESUS CHRIST. Amen."

It has already been noticed*, that objections have been offered to the name RAMBLER. In addition to what was then suggested on this subject, we may give the account he rendered to Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS, which forms probably as good an excuse as so trifling a circumstance demands. "What must be done, Sir, will be done. When I was to begin publishing that paper, I was at a loss how to name it. I sat down at night upon my bed-side, and resolved that I would not go to sleep till I had fixed its

Preface to the GUARDIAN.

title. The RAMBLER seemed the best that occurred, and I took it." The Italians have literally translated this name by Il Vagabondo.

The first paper was published on Tuesday, March 20, 1749-50, and the work continued without the least interruption, every Tuesday and Saturday, until Saturday March 14*, 1752, on which day it closed, Each number was

handsomely printed on a sheet and a half of fine paper, at the price of two-pence, and with great typographical accuracy, not above a dozen errors occurring in the whole work: a circumstance the more remarkable, because the copy was written in haste as the time urged, and sent to the press without being revised by the author. When we consider that in the whole progress of the work, the sum of assistance he received scarcely amounted to five papers, we must wonder at the fertility of a mind engaged during the same period in that stupendous labour THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY, and frequently distracted by disease and anguish. There is not in the annals of literature an instance which can be brought as a parallel to this, if we take every circumstance into the account. Other ESSAYISTS have had the choice of their days, and their happy hours for composition but Dr. JOHNSON knew no remission, although he very probably would have been glad of it, and yet continued to write with unabated vigour, although even this disappointment might be supposed to have often

* Erroneously printed in the fol. edit. March 17. VOL. XIX.

b

rendered him uneasy, and his natural indolence (not the indolence of will, but of constitution) would in other men have palsied every effort. Towards the conclusion, there is so little of that "falling off" visible in some works of the same kind, that it might probably have been extended much further, had the encouragement of the publick borne any proportion to its merits.

The sale was very inconsiderable, and seldom exceeded five hundred; and it is very remarkable, and a most curious trait in the taste of the age, that the only paper which had a prosperous sale, and may be said to have been popular, was one which Dr. JOHNSON did not write*. This was No. 97, written by RICHARDSON, the author of Clarissa, Pamela, and Sir Charles Grandison. Dr. JOHNSON introduces it to his readers with an elegant compliment, as the production" of an author from whom the age has received greater favours, who has enlarged the knowledge of human nature, and taught the passions to move at the command of virtue." Greater favours the Greater favours the age had undoubtedly received from RICHARDSON, for this paper is of very inferior merit in point of style; and as to subject, proceeds upon an error that may be easily detected. It complains how much the modes of courtship are degenerated since the days of the SPECTATOR, who repeatedly makes the same complaint.

*Upon the authority of Mr. PAYNE, communicated to Mr. NICHOLS, and by him to the present writer.

As the assistance Dr. JOHNSON received was so trifling in respect to quantity, all the notice of it that is necessary may be dispatched before we proceed farther. The four billets in No. 10 were written by Miss MULSO, afterwards Mrs. CHAPONE, who will come to be mentioned in the Preface to the ADVENTURER. No. 30 was written by Miss CATHERINE TALBOT, a lady of whom a very exalted character has been handed down. She was the only daughter of the Rev. EDWARD TALBOT, Archdeacon of Berks, and Preacher at the Rolls. She possessed great natural talents, a vigorous understanding, a lively imagination and refined taste. Her principal works Reflections on the seven Days of the Week," and "Essays on various Subjects, 2 vols." breathe the noblest spirit of Christian benevolence, and discover a more than common acquaintance with human na

ture.

Miss TALBOT lived many years in the family of Archbishop SECKER, who made a very liberal provision for her and her mother in his will, leaving them the interest for their lives of fourteen thousand pounds which he directed to be afterwards given to various charities. During her residence with the venerable prclate, a singular occurrence took place.

In

1759, the unhappy Dr. DODD published an edition of Bishop HALL'S Meditations, and dedicated them to Miss TALBOT. This dedication, however, was so strongly expressed as to give great offence to the Archbishop, who, after a warm epistolary expostulation, insisted

on the sheet being cancelled in all the remaining copies. DODD's object was preferment; and he was weak enough to think no flattery too gross, by which his wish might be accomplished. Miss TALBOT died Jan. 9, 1770, in her 49th year. Besides the works already mentioned, she was the author of a beautiful and fanciful letter to a new-born child, daughter of Mr. John Talbot, a son of the Lord Chancellor*, and was one of the writers in "The Athenian Letters."

The only remaining contributor was Mrs. ELIZABETH CARTER, who wrote No. 44 and 100; and who, at the distance of half a century, enjoyed in full possession that liberal and enlightened mind, which had engaged the esteein and admiration of successive generations of wits and scholars. Of this excellent lady, Dr. JOHNSON used to say that her learning did not interfere with her domestick duties." She could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus from the Greek; and work a handkerchief as well as compose a poem." He once composed a Greek epigram to ELIZA (CARTER), and declared that she ought to be celebrated in as many different languages as Lewis le Grand+. Mrs. CARTER died Feb. 19, 1806. Her Memoirs have since been published in a quarto

* Annual Register, 1770. But a much more full and excellent account of this Lady is given in Butler's Life of Bishop Hildesley, which I had not seen, when the above sketch was prepared for the former edition of the British Essayists.

+ The second letter in No. 107 was from an unknown correspondent,