With respect to the light which such a discovery might throw upon Roman manners, there would be reasons to desire it; but I should dread to disfigure the beautiful ideal of the memories of those illustrious persons with incongruous features, and to sully the imaginative purity of their classical works with gross and trivial recollections. The least weighty objection to heterogeneous details is that they are mainly superfluous, and therefore an incumbrance.'

We have marked by italics that part of the above passage in which we find it most difficult to believe that this wise, no less than eloquent man has expressed the settled and deliberate conviction of his mind. It is admitted that it may be expedient to submit to a minute scrutiny the private life of persons who have 'borne an active part in the world,' and asserted that nothing of this applies to authors, merely as authors.' Now, that nothing of this applies to some, or to many, or even to the case of most authors, may possibly be true (though we do not think so); but on what principle it should be said of authors who, though not bearing what is familiarly called an active part in the world,' have, as exerting their talents on practical questions, bringing understandings of remarkable strength to bear, in permanent shapes, on subjects of moral and political interest, and consequently filling a part, above all others, both active and influential, in determining the opinions, sentiments, and actual conduct of those of their fellow mortals who are immediately concerned in the great movements of public affairs, as well as of all who have to sit on judgment, whether at the time or ages afterwards, on these prominent actors of the busy stage of life-on what principle Mr. Wordsworth should conceive that nothing of this applies to such authors as the moralist or the poet, who, by his single pen, exercises perhaps wider and more lasting sway over the tone of thought and feeling throughout whole nations, than a regiment of kings and ministers put together ;-this indeed is what we cannot pretend to understand. It is scarcely possible to put the question seriously-but where is the mere statesman of the last age who at this moment, even if Boswell had never written, would have filled so large a space in the contemplation of any considerable section of mankind, as Dr. Johnson himself-or the details of whose private life, had they been preserved with Boswellian fidelity, would have found one reader for fifty that are continually poring over the pages before us? If we measure either the importance or the interest of personal details, by the extent to which the individual recorded has influenced the intellect, the feelings, the character of his countrymen, and consequently in fact the fortunes of the nation itself, we shall assuredly place those connected with the man who, by exertions in whatever walk of literature-no matter at what a distance from the gaudy surface of

external

external pomps and vanities these may have been conducted, no matter in how mean a hovel he may have wielded his quill-has achieved anything at all approaching to the authority of a Johnson, far and infinitely far above all that the prying diligence of either friend or foe could ever have accumulated concerning the private sayings and doings of the most eminent so called 'public man' of the same generation. It is in vain, on questions of this kind, to oppose the suggestions of a refined meditative delicacy, such as breathes throughout the whole of the Letter' we have quoted, to the broad instinctive impetus and determined taste of the species at large. Neither does it seem to us that Mr. Wordsworth is over happy in the cases he selects, or in the logic with which he applies them. It is by no means true, for example, but lamentably the reverse, that all the details which Horace gives us about the private proceedings of himself and his associates, are delightful;' too many of them are loathsome and disgusting; but if the greater part be, as all must acknowledge, delightful,' upon what principle are we to decide that it would have been otherwise than delightful to have had a great deal more of the like quality? Mr. Wordsworth is enchanted with the Iter ad Brundusium; would he have regretted the circumstance had the poet, in the happy exercise of his own genius,' left us half-a-dozen more such itinera? or would he have been seriously displeased had either rhetor comes Heliodorus' or ' Fonteius-ad unguem factus homo,' in the exercise of such ability as heaven had pleased to bestow, indited an account of the actual progress, bearing to Horace's the same sort of relation that Boswell's Hebridean Journal does to the Doctor's own immortal • Tour.'

Surely the lamentable circumstance is, not that the Boswellian style should have been applied to the history of one great man, but that there should be so few even of the greatest men whose lives could be so dealt with without serious injury to their fame. 'There never,' says Mr. Croker, has existed any human being, all the details of whose life, all the motives of whose actions, all the thoughts of whose mind, have been so unreservedly brought before the public; even his prayers, his most secret meditations, and his most scrupulous self-reproaches, have been laid before the world.' They have all been sifted, too, and commented on, it may now be added, with as deliberate an exercise of studious acuteness as ever frightened a conscious imagination. All that curiosity could glean, or enthusiasm garner, philosophic penetration has bolted to the bran. There are, perhaps,' (Mr. Croker says elsewhere,) not many men who have practised such self-examination as to know themselves as well as every reader knows Dr. Johnson.' And what is

the

the result?-that, in spite of innumerable oddities, and of many laughable and some few condemnable weaknesses, when we desire to call up the notion of a human being thoroughly, as far as our fallen clay admits the predication of such qualities, good and wise; in the whole of his mind lofty, of his temper generous, in the midst of misery incapable of shabbiness, 'every inch a man,'the name of Samuel Johnson springs to every lip. Whatever our habits of self-examination may have been, we certainly know him better than we are ever likely to do most of our own friends, and ́ feel that, in one instance at least, the adage about heroes and their valets-de-chambre does not hold. The character is before us bare, and throughout it stands erect, sincere, great; the thoughts habitually turned on great things, and yet the observation of the world equally keen and broad; the sympathy with human passions, interests, and occupations almost boundless; and the charity for frailty, and feebleness, and sin, most Christian.

It is, indeed, sad to consider how few even of the first could, after such a process of dissection, lay claim to this high, pervading nobility. If we want a foil for Johnson in his own order,' we have but to pick and choose among the few of recent times who have descended to the grave after having commanded anything like the same measure of public attention. On all sides, with hardly an exception, what 'follies of the wise!'-what jealousies, what meannesses, what intrigues, what petty ambitions, what degrading indulgences, what shameful subserviencies and panderings to the worser parts of that common nature which genius is sent down among us the appointed instrument of heaven to rebuke, charm, and elevate! What a worship of worldly idols, what hankerings after toys, what a want of sense, even in the midst of the most brilliant energy of the finest understandings, to comprehend the worth of their own place and destiny; what a maze of small vanity, and fierce self-love, and malice; how little either of moral repose, or even of intellectual pride! And what apologies are we called on to accept as quittance, when compared with those which, had he fallen as short of the right stature as the most gifted and worst of these, might have been advanced for him? Who had stronger passions, who more besetting temptations, who more painful physical infirmities, or a darker enemy to struggle against in the very spring of his essence; who, with such exquisite sensibilities, had to withstand such abject penury, such chilling scorn, on the one hand; or, doubly dangerous for contrast, a more lavish excess of assentation, after the world had been pleased to smile? Truly, it is enough to make the most compassionate heart swell, when we are gravely desired, in judging of more than one career that we could mention, to take such and such sorrows and grievances, and blandish,

ments

ments and allurements, into our account-and remember, as who can forget? through what a sea of troubles this forlorn giant worked his way,-how Syrens, and Circes, and Calypsos assailed him in vain,-how safely he steered his heavy laden and labouring bark between the Scylla of disgust and the Charybdis of luxury, and with what calm self-possession he occupied the harbour he at last had found—' totus teres atque rotundus ;'—a proud, melancholy, ambitious spirit; yet neither to be shattered by affronts, nor bruised down by the tedious anguish of neglect, nor sapped by adulations. We happen to have at our elbow as we write a certain Correspondance Générale, et avec le Roi de Prusse,' in twenty-one volumes, Svo., and Mr. Moore's two recent quartos; but we should be sorry to trust ourselves in a detailed comparison of either Voltaire or Byron with yours, impransus, Samuel Johnson.' '*

Our readers probably remember that 'Rasselas' and 'Candide' came out exactly at the same time-if we recollect aright, in the same week; and that Dr. Johnson, on perusing Voltaire's piece, said, if the French novel had appeared ever so little before the English, or vice versa, it would have been impossible for the author that published second to have passed with the world for other than the plagiary of the first. Perhaps the coincidence of plan is not more extraordinary than the equal perfection, in two wholly different styles, of the execution. The two great masters of the age meet on the same field, each armed cap-a-pee in the strength and splendour of his faculties and acquirements; and, looking merely to the display of talent, it might be difficult to strike the balance. But if we consider the impression left as to the moral and intellectual character of the authors respectively, and remember also the different circumstances under which they had conceived and laboured, how clear is the triumph! The one man, in the gloom of sorrow and penury, tasks his strength for a rapid effort, that he may have the means to discharge the expenses of a dear parent's funeral; the other, surrounded by the blaze of universal fame, and in the midst of every luxury that wealth could bring to embellish a romantic retirement, sits down deliberately to indulge his spleen, ready to kick the world to pieces simply because his self-love has been galled by the out

*The following story, introduced in Mr. Croker's edition, was, we believe, originally given in that vast mine of curious and interesting research, 'Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century:'-Soon after Savage's Life was published, Mr. Harte, author of the "Life of Gustavus Adolphus," dined with Edward Cave, and occasionally praised it. Soon after meeting him, Cave said, “ You made a man very happy t'other day." "How could that be?" says Harte, "nobody was there but ourselves." Cave answered, by reminding him that a plate of victuals was sent behind a screen, which was to Johnson, dressed so shabbily, that he did not choose to appear; but, on hearing the conversation, he was highly delighted with the encomiums on his book.'-vol. i., p. 139.

breaking

breaking insolence of a despot, to whom, during twenty years, he had prostrated himself in the dirtiest abasement of flatteries. How soothing and elevating to turn from the bitter revelry of his cynicism to the solemn sadness of the rival work-its grave compassion for the vanities of mankind-its sympathy with our toils and perils-its indignation even at vice constantly softening into a humble and hopeful charity-its melancholy but majestic aspirations after the good and the great, philosophy sublimed by faith.

How close, even in minutiæ, is the parallel-how wide, where they come nearest, the interval! Compare these two passages:

Il y avait dans le voisinage un derviche très fameux, qui passait pour le meilleur philosophe de la Turquie. Ils allèrent le consulter. Pangloss porta la parole, et lui dit: Maître, nous venons vous prier de vous dire pourquoi un aussi étrange animal que l'homme a été formé ?

'De quoi te mêles-tu, dit le derviche? est-ce-là ton affaire? Mais, mon révérend père, dit Candide, il y a horriblement du mal sur la terre. Qu'importe, dit le derviche, qu'il y ait du mal ou du bien? Quand sa hautesse envoie un vaisseau en Egypte, s'embarrasse-t'elle si les souris qui sont dans le vaisseau sont à leur aise ou non ? Que faut-il donc faire? dit Pangloss. Te taire, dit le derviche. Je me flattai, dit Pangloss, de raisonner un peu avec vous des effets et des causes, du meilleur des mondes possibles, de l'origine du mal, de la nature de l'ame, et de l'harmonie preétablie. Le derviche à ces mots leur ferma la porte au nez?

'As they walked along the banks of the Nile, delighted with the beams of the moon quivering on the water, they saw, at a small distance, an old man, whom the prince had often heard in the assembly of the sages. "Yonder," said he, "is one whose years have calmed his passions, but not clouded his reason; let us inquire what are his sentiments of his own state, that we may know whether youth alone is to struggle with vexation, and whether any better hope remains for the latter part of life?"

'Here the sage approached and saluted them. The old man was cheerful and talkative, and the way seemed short in his company. "Sir," said the princess, "an evening's walk must give to a man of learning, like you, pleasures which ignorance and youth can hardly conceive. Everything must supply you with contemplation, and renew the consciousness of your own dignity."

"Lady," answered he, "let the gay and the vigorous expect pleasure in their excursions, it is enough that age can obtain ease. To me the world has lost its novelty; and I but see what I remember to have seen in happier days. I rest against a tree, and consider that in the same shade I once disputed on the annual overflow of the Nile with a friend who is now silent in the grave."

"You may, at least, recreate yourself," said Imlac, "with the recollection of an honourable and useful life, and enjoy the praise which all agree to give you."

666 Praise,'