That winter was his last. His legs grew weaker; his breath grew shorter; the fatal water gathered fast in spite of incisions which he, courageous against pain but timid against death, urged his surgeons to make deeper and deeper. Though the tender care which had mitigated his sufferings during months of sickness at Streatham was withdrawn, and though Boswell was absent, he was not left desolate. The ablest physicians and surgeons attended him, and refused to accept fees from him. Burke parted from him with deep emotion. Windham sat much in the sick-room. Frances Burney, whom the old man had cherished with fatherly kindness, stood weeping at the door ; while Langton, whose piety eminently qualified him to be an adviser and comforter at such a time, re ceived the last pressure of his friend's hand within. When at length the moment, dreaded through so many years, came close, the dark cloud passed away from Johnson's mind. Windham's servant, who sat up with him during his last night, declared that "no man could appear more collected, more devout or less terrified at the thoughts of the approaching minute." At hour intervals, often of much pain, he was moved in bed and addressed himself vehemently to prayer. In the morning he was still able to give his bleEsing, bit in the afternoon he became drowsy, and at a quarter past seven in the evening on the 13th of December 1784, in his seventy-sixth year, he passed away. He was laid, a week later, in Westminster Abbey, among the eminent men of whom he had been the historian —Cowley and Denham, Dryden and Congreve, Gay, Prior and Addison. (M.) above is a reprint of Macaulay's article as re vised for the i ith edn. of the Encyclopwdia Britannica by T. Sec combe, who added the following note : "The splendid example of his style which Macaulay contributed in the article on Johnson to the 8th edition of this encyclopaedia has become classic, and has therefore been retained above with a few trifling modifications in those places in which his invincible love of the picturesque has drawn him demonstrably aside from the dull line of veracity. Macaulay, it must be noted, exaggerated persistently the poverty of Johnson's pedigree, the squalor, of his early married life, the grotesqueness of his entourage in Fleet Street, the decline and fall from complete virtue of Mrs. Thrale, the novelty and success of the Dictionary, the complete failure of the Shakespeare and the political tracts. Yet this contribution is far more mellow than the article contributed on Johnson twenty-five years before to the Edinburgh Review in correction of Croker. Matthew Arnold, who edited six selected Lives of the poets, regarded it as one of Macaulay's happiest and ripest efforts. It was written out of friendship for Adam Black, and 'payment was not so much as mentioned.' The big reviews, especially the quarterlies, have always been the natural home of Johnsonian study. Sir Walter Scott, Croker, Hayward, Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle (whose famous Fraser article was reprinted in 1853) and Whitwell Elwin have done as much as anybody perhaps to sustain the zest for Johnsonian studies. Macaulay's prediction that the interest in the man would supersede that in his 'works' seemed and seems likely enough to justify itself ; but his theory that the man alone mattered and that a portrait painted by the hand of an inspired idiot was a true measure of the man has not worn better than the common run of literary propositions. Johnson's prose is not extensively read. But the same is true of nearly all the great prose masters of the i8th century. As in the case of all great men, Johnson has suffered a good deal at the hands of his imi tators and admirers. His prose, though not nearly so uniformly monotonous or polysyllabic as the parodists would have us believe, was at one time greatly overpraised. From the 'Life of Savage' to the 'Life of Pope' it developed a great deal, and in the main improved. To the last he sacrificed expression rather too much to style, and he was perhaps over-conscious of the balanced epithet. But he contributed both dignity and dialectical force to the prose movement of his period."
Seccombe's comment was written there has been a steady output of Johnsonian literature. In the first place, Courtney and Nichol Smith's Bibliography of Johnson (1915) pro vides a sound basis for the study of the text of the whole of Johnson's works; an index of Johnson's literary criticism is contained in J. E. Brown's Critical Opinions of Dr. Johnson (5926) and P. H. Houston's Doctor Johnson, A Study in XVIII. Century Humanism (1923) discusses Johnson from the scholastic point of view. Such works are evidence of the greater attention now being paid to Johnson's own writings. Of the Collected Works it is still true to say that the best edition is the Oxford edition of 1825 in 9 volumes, with two supple mentary volumes containing the Debates. Similarly the Birkbeck Hill editions of the Lives of the Poets (19o5) and of the Letters (1592) remain the standard editions, though Proposals for a definitive edition of the Letters have been published by R. W. Chapman (Essays and Studies, Eng. Assoc. xii.). The latter editor has also produced editions of the Journey to the Western Islands (1924) and of Rasselas (1927) ; in both books the text is edited with scrupulous care. Though Rasselas was in Johnson's own day by far the most popular of his prose writings, later generations have preferred the Lives of the Poets, and it is significant that this work is now available in the World's Classics (ed. A. Waugh, 1906) and in Everyman's Library (ed. L. Archer-Hind, 1925). Enthusiasts for Johnson's prose have also en deavoured to popularize it by books of selections ; e.g., Selections from The Rambler (ed. W. Hale White, 1907), Selections from The Idler (ed. S. C. Roberts, 1921), Johnson on Shakespeare (ed. W.
Raleigh, 5908), Selected Letters (ed. R. W. Chapman, 5925), Samtuel Johnson: Writer (ed. S. C. Roberts, 1927). A handy reprint of Johnson's Poems is contained in The Poems of Johnson, Goldsmith, Gray and Collins (ed. T. Methuen Ward, 1905) and D. Nichol Smith's edition of the Poems is in preparation.
Recent editions of and selections from Boswell's Life are noted under BOSWELL (q.v.), but Sir Leslie Stephen's Samuel Johnson (1878) remains the best short biography ; Col. F. Grant's Life and Writings of Samuel Johnson, planned on a similar scale, contains a useful bibliography ; T. Seccombe's The Age of Johnson (1899) gives a concise account of the period, and S. C. Roberts' Story of Dr.
i Johnson (1919) provides an introduction for the beginner John soniana; the most intensive study of the byways of Johnson's career is that undertaken by Aleyn Lyell Reade, of whose Johnsonian Gleanings five parts have been published. A. M. Broadley's Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale (1909) , with an essay by T. Seccombe, contained much new material, and Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes have been freshly edited by S. C. Roberts (1925). The revival of general interest in Johnsoniana may perhaps be dated from the publication of Sir Walter Raleigh's Six Essays on Johnson (Iwo), a model of sane appreciation, and such small books as John Bailey's Dr. Johnson and his Circle (1913) and Robert Lynd's Dr. Johnson and Company (1927) are significant of the really popular interest in the subject. Many of the lesser lives, or parts of them, by Hawkins, Murphy, Tyers and others are included in the two volumes of Birkbeck Hill's Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897) ; in Dr. Johnson and Fanny Burney (1912) C. B. Tinker collects the passages from the diary and letters of Madame D'Arblay which relate to Johnson. Collectors (notably R. B. Adam and A. Edward Newton) have facilitated research and editing; in particular, the former's Catalogue, containing many fac similes of letters and mss., is of great value. Johnson's "Club" has continued till the present day and its members are for the most part eminent in literature or politics or both. The Johnson Club, founded in 1884, meets in the Johnson House in Gough Square, Lon don, happily rescued from ruin by Mr. Cecil Harmsworth. Two volumes of Johnson Club Papers have been published. A Johnson Society has also been founded at Lichfield where the anniversary of Johnson's birth is regularly celebrated. (S. C. R.)