ten his share. His oddities and infirmities in common life, will, after a while, be overlooked and forgotten; but his writings will remain a monument of his genius and learning; ftill more and more ftudied and admired, while Britons shall continue to be characterized by a love of elegance and fublimity, of good fenfe and virtue. In the works of Johnson, the reader will find a perpetual fource of pleasure and instruction. With due precaution, men may learn to give to their style, elegance, harmony, and precision; they may be taught to think with vigour and perfpicuity; and all, by a diligent attention to his writings, may advance in virtue.

The character of Johnson, as given by Mr. Bofwell in the conclufion of his work, is delineated with a mafterly pencil. The drawing appears to be fufficiently accurate, the light and fhade well diftributed, and the colouring very little overcharged or

heightened; though a favourable likeness was perhaps in fome degree intended, as far as might feem confiftent with the truth of resemblance, and no farther.

"His figure was large and well-formed, and his countenance of the cast of an ancient ftatue; yet his appearance was rendered strange and fomewhat uncouth, by convulfive cramps, by the fears of that dif temper which it was once imagined the royal touch could cure, and by a flovenly mode of drefs. He had the ufe only of one eye; yet fo much does mind govern, and even fupply the deficiency of organs, that his vifual perceptions, as far as they extended, were uncommonly quick and accurate. So morbid was his temperament, that he never knew the natural joy of a free and vigorous use of his limbs: when he walked, it was like the ftruggling gait of one in fetters; when he rode, he had

no command or direction of his horse, but was carried as if in a balloon. That, with his conftitution and habits of life, he fhould have lived feventy-five years, is a proof that an inherent vivida vis is a powerful preservative of the human frame.

Man is in general made up of contradictory qualities, and thefe will ever show themselves in strange fucceffion, where a confiftency, in appearance at least, if not in reality, has not been attained by long habits of philofophical difcipline. In proportion to the native vigour of the mind, the contradictory qualities will be the more prominent, and more difficult to be adjusted; and therefore we are not to wonder, that Johnson exhibited an eminent example of this remark which I have made upon human nature. At different times he feemed a different man, in fome refpects; not, however, in any great or ef fential article, upon which he had fully em

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ployed his mind, and fettled certain principles of duty, but only in his manners, and in difplays of argument and fancy in his talk. He was prone to fuperftition, but not to credulity. Though his imagination might incline him to a belief of the marvellous and the myfterious, his vigorous reafon examined the evidence with jealoufy. He was a fincere and zealous Chriftian, of high church of England and monarchical principles, which he would not tamely fuffer to be queftioned; and had, perhaps, at an early period, narrowed his mind fomewhat too much, both as to religion and politics. His being impressed with the danger of extreme latitude in either, though he was of a very independent spirit, occafioned his appearing fomewhat unfavourable to the prevalence of that noble freedom of fentiment which is the best poffeffion of man. Nor can it be denied, that he had many prejudices; which, however,

frequently fuggefted many of his pointed fayings, that rather fhow a playfulness of fancy, than any fettled malignity. He was fteady and inflexible in maintaining the obligations of religion and morality, both from a regard for the order of fociety, and from a veneration for the Great Source of all order; correct, nay ftern in his tafte; hard to please, and eafily offended; impetuous and irritable in his temper, but of a moft humane and benevolent heart, which fhowed itself not only in a moft liberal charity, as far as his circumstances would allow, but in a thousand inftances of active benevolence. He was afflicted with a bodily disease which made him restless and fretful, and with a constitutional melancholy, the clouds of which darkened the brightness of his fancy, and gave a gloomy cast to his whole courfe of thinking: we therefore ought not to wonder at his fallies of impatience and paffion at any time, espe