the same object; and consented to repeat her Lady Macbeth to gratify the Princess Charlotte, and her Royal Consort of Saxe-Coburg.

She gave public readings from Shakespeare at the Argyll Rooms, during two seasons, "from the two-fold inducements of personal gratification and an important addition to her income," which were now necessary to support her appropriately. "A large red screen formed what painters would call a background to the figure of the charming reader. She was dressed in white, and her dark hair, à la Grecque, crossed her temples in full masses. Behind

the screen a light was placed; and, as the head moved, a bright circular irradiation seemed to wave around its outline, which gave to a classic mind the impression, that the priestess of Apollo stood before you, uttering the inspiration of the deity, in immortal verse."

Joanna Baillie dined with Mrs. Siddons, in company with the poet Rogers and his sister. The great actress was now an old woman. "We expected," said the poetess, "to see much decay in her powers of expression, and consequently to have our pleasure mingled with pain. Judge then of our delight when we heard her read the best scenes of Hamlet, with expression of countenance, voice, and action, that would have done honor to her best days! She was before us as an unconquerable creature, over whose astonishing gifts of nature Time had no power. At the end of the reading, Rogers said, 'Oh, that we could have assembled a company of young people to witness this, that they might have conveyed the memory of it down to another generation.""

Campbell had once by chance the honor of seeing Mrs. Siddons and the Duke of Wellington in the same party at Paris. They were observed, after a first mutual recognizance, to stand by each other without conversing. She had very little light conversation in mixed company for any body, but when her heart was interested, she was

very condescending, and would exert herself to please. She doted upon children. Some time after the poet had seen her in Paris, he visited her, with his son, who was then about six years old. He had to leave the child with her for about an hour, and in his absence he had some misgivings that it was unfair to have taxed her with the company of so young a visitant. he found the little fellow's face lighted up in earnest conversation with her. She had been amusing him with stories adapted to his capacity, and bestowed attentions on a child which she had refused to a conqueror.

But when he came back,

III.

DOCTOR JOHNSON.

It is impossible to think of Doctor Johnson without being struck with his prodigiousness. He was extraordinary in every way: in his mind and in his body, in his wisdom and in his prejudices, in his learning and in his superstitions, in his piety and in his bigotry: there was nothing ordinary about him. All descriptions of him are nearly alike, all impressions much the same. However excellent or mean the artist or the biographer, the picture is recognized; there is no mistaking the great lexicographer, the imperial talker; the man and the character stand before you.

In St. Mary's Square, Lichfield, there is a statue of "the mighty sage." "The figure," says Hawthorne, "is colossal (though perhaps not much more so than the mountainous Doctor himself). . . . The statue is immensely massive, a vast ponderosity of stone, not finely spiritualized, nor, indeed, fully humanized, but rather resembling a great stone-bowlder than a man."

Boswell's book has done more for Johnson, in the judgment of Macaulay, than the best of his own books. could do. "The memory of other authors is kept alive by their works. But the memory of Johnson keeps many of his works alive. The old philosopher is still among us in the brown coat with the metal buttons and the shirt which ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, drumming with his fingers, tearing his meat like a tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans.”

"To have seen such a man as Johnson," said Dr. Campbell, "was a thing to talk of a century hence."

"His person," says Lord Pembroke, "was large, robust, I may say, approaching to the gigantic, and grown unwieldy from corpulency. His countenance was naturally of the cast of an ancient statue, but somewhat disfigured by the scars of that evil, which, it was formerly imagined, the royal touch could cure. He was now [when he started on his tour to the Hebrides] in his sixty-fourth year, and was become a little dull of hearing. . . . His head, and sometimes also his body, shook with a kind of motion like the effect of a palsy: he appeared to be frequently disturbed by cramps, or convulsive contractions, of the nature of that distemper called St. Vitus' dance. He wore a full suit of plain brown clothes, with twisted hair-buttons of the same color, a large bushy grayish wig, a plain shirt, black worsted stockings, and silver buckles. Upon this tour, when journeying, he wore boots, and a very wide brown cloth great coat, with pockets which might almost have held the two volumes of his folio dictionary, and he carried in his hand a large English oakstick."

The great oak-stick that he had brought from London he lost in the Hebrides. It had, we are informed, the properties of a measure; for one nail was driven into it at the length of a foot; another at that of a yard. In return for the services it had done him, he said he would make a present of it to some museum; but he little thought he was so soon to lose it. As he preferred riding with a switch, it was intrusted to a fellow to be delivered to the baggage-man, who followed at some distance; but he never saw it more. "I could not," said his friend, "persuade him out of a suspicion that it had been stolen. 'No, no, my friend,' said he; 'it is not to be expected that any man in Mull, who has got it, will part with it. Consider, sir, the value of such a piece of timber here!'"

Madame D'Arblay describes him as "tall, stout, grand, and authoritative: but he stoops horribly; his back is

quite round: his mouth is continually opening and shutting, as if he were chewing something; he has a singular method of twirling his fingers, and twisting his hands: his vast body is in constant agitation, see-sawing backward and forward: his feet are never a moment quiet; and his whole great person looked often as if it were going to roll itself, quite voluntarily, from his chair to the floor."

He held his head to one side, we are told, toward his right shoulder, and shook it in a tremulous manner, moving his body backward and forward, and rubbing his left knee in the same direction with the palm of his hand. In the intervals of articulating, he made various sounds with his mouth; sometimes as if ruminating, or what is called chewing the cud, sometimes giving a half whistle, sometimes making his tongue play backward from the roof of his mouth, as if chuckling like a hen, and sometimes protruding it against his upper gums in front, as if pronouncing quickly under his breath, too, too, too, all this accompanied sometimes with a thoughtful look, but more frequently with a smile. Generally when he had concluded a period, in the course of a dispute, by which time he was a good deal exhausted by violence and vociferation, he used to blow out his breath like a whale. He was very near-sighted, and his big wig was often a good deal singed in consequence.

As a boy he was overgrown, if not monstrous. A lady once consulted him on the degree of turpitude to be attached to her son's robbing an orchard. "Madam," said Johnson, "it all depends upon the weight of the boy. David Garrick, who was always a little fellow, robbed a dozen of orchards with impunity; but the very first time I climbed up an apple-tree- for I was always a heavy boy the bough broke with me, and it was called judgment. I suppose that is why Justice is represented with a pair of scales." This, it must be remembered, is in