but have rarely admitted any word not authorised by former writers; for I believe that whoever knows the English tongue, in its present extent, will be able to express his thoughts without further help from other nations." The success of his labours will be considered, when we estimate the beauties and defects of his style. The self-congratulation, in the concluding paragraph, is so dignified, and pathetic, that it is impossible to avoid transcribing it. "The essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute my own intentions, will be found exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity, without any accommodation to the licentiousness and levity of the present age. I, therefore, look back on this part of my work with pleasure, which no blame or praise of man shall diminish or augment. I shall never envy the honours which wit and learning obtain in any other cause, if I can be numbered among the writers who have given ardour to virtue, and confidence to truth." The conclusion of the Rambler, without the author's giving his readers any warning of his intention, was probably accelerated by the declining health of his wife, who survived the date of his last paper only three days. She died on the 17th of March 1752, and after a cohabitation of seventeen years, left him a childless widower, abandoned to sorrow, and incapable of consolation. The dreadful shock of separation happened in the night, and he sent to Westminster for Dr Taylor, who came to him immediately. When he arrived, Johnson was all but wild with excess of sorrow, and scarcely knew him. After some minutes, Dr Taylor proposed their joining in prayer, as the only rational method of calming the violence of his grief, strengthening his confidence in the almighty and all-wise Dispenser of good and evil; and reconciling him to a a privation which he ought to have anticipated, and been prepared for, in the happiest moments of possession. The next day, his anxiety to have the solace of his company, and the benefit of his prayers, produced the following note: "Let me have your company and instruction. Do not live away from me. My distress is great. "Remember me in your prayers; for vain is the help of man.” * She was buried, according to his direction, in the chapel of Bromley in Kent, under the care of his friend Hawkesworth, who resided at that place. Over her remains, a few months before his death, he laid a black marble stone, with the following inscription : Hic conduntur reliquiæ Antiqua Jarvisiorum gente, Peatlinga, apud Leicestrienses, ortæ; Qui multum amatam, diuque defletam, Obiit Londini, mense Mart. A. D. MDCCLII. In the interval between her death and burial, under the pressure of so great and recent a calamity, he composed a solemn and pathetic discourse for the pulpit, which was never preached; but, being given to Dr Taylor, who refused to deliver it, has been published since his death, and is justly regarded as a rational and consolatary composition, of uncommon excellence. His prayers for Tetty*, from this time to the end of his life, however irreconcileable they may be to his profession as a Protestant, strongly express the warmth of his affection, and the fervour of his piety. With an amiable inclination to believe in the existence of an intermediate state between death and final judgment, he deviated from strict Protestantism, which regards our state at the close of life, as the measure of our final sentence, and rejects prayers for the dead, as the vain oblation of superstition. But he seems * A familiar appellation of Elizabeth, used in some parts of Staffordshire. not to have steadily believed that there was a middle state, where the soul may be purified by certain degrees of suffering, his prayers being only conditional, and accompanied with doubts of their lawfulness and propriety. "O Lord, so far as it may be lawful in me, I commend to thy Fatherly goodness the soul of my departed wife; beseeching thee to grant her whatever is best in her present state, and finally to receive her to eternal happiness." "March 28, 1753, I kept this day as the anniversary of my Tetty's death, with prayers and tears in the morning. In the evening I prayed for her conditionally, if it were lawful." 66 April 23, 1753. I know not whether I do not too much indulge the vain longings of affection, but I hope they interest my heart; and that when I die like my Tetty, this affec The apparent contradiction, in the commemoration of her death on the 28th, and the inscription on her wedding ring, which places her decease on the 17th, may be reconciled by the following memorandum in his Diary: Jan 1, 1753, N. S. which I shall use for the future." |