The efforts of his mind were the utmost it could bear ; and when it was subdued by grief at the death of his wife (1752), he relinquished the ' Rambler.' Bad as his circumstances were, still they were some what more easy than they had been ; the number of his acquaintances bad increased; the 'Dictionary,' which occupied eight instead of the promised three years, was nearly complete ; and he found leisure (in 1754) to make an excursion to Oxford for the purpose of consulting its libraries. This was his first emancipation from necessary labour. He soon returned to London to increase the number of reviews and essays which flowed continually from his pen. Thus occupied, an offer of a living was made to him if be would take orders; but though he was a firm believer in revelation, and a somewhat rigid moralist, he could not overcome his scruples respecting the fitness of his temper and habits for the duties that would be required of him, and tho offer was rejected. He continued therefore to write for his bread ; and it was not until he was fifty-three years old, and had for thirty years been toiling with his pen, that any certain source of income was opened to him. In May 1702 George III., through his minister Lord Bute, granted Johnson a pension of 3001. a year, and the days of his penury were at an end. Happy, in a state of independence, ha enjoyed the society of a weekly club, of which Burke, Goldsmith, and Sir Joshua Reynolds were also members. He was introduced in the following year to his biographer Boswell, and we have from this date (1763) as full and minute account of him as has over been written of any individual. From this time we are made as familiar as it is in the power of writing to make us with the character, the habits, and the appearance of Johnson, and the persons and thiugs with which he was connected. "Everything about him," says Macaulay, "his coat, his wig, his figure, his face, his scrofula, his St. Vitus's dance, his rolling walk, his blinking eye, the outward signs which too clearly marked the approbation of his dinner, his insatiable appetite for fish•sauce and veal-pie with plums, his inextinguishable thirst for tea, his trick of touching the posts as he walked, his mysterious practice of treasuring up scraps of orange-peel, his morning slumbers, his midnight dispu tations, his contortions, his mutterings, his gruntings, his puffings; his vigorous, acute, and ready eloquence; his sarcastic wit, his vehemence, his insolence, his fits of tempestuous Inge, his queer inmates—old Mr. Levett and blind Mrs. Williams, the cat Hodge and the negro Frank— all are as familiar to us as the objects by which we have been surrounded from childhood." In 1765 the university of Dublin sent over a diploma creating him a doctor of laws, but he did not assume the title of doctor until eight or ten years afterwards, when the university of Oxford conferred the same honour upon him.
In 1766 his constitution seemed to be rapidly giving way, and he was depressed with a melancholy: In this condition his friend Mr. Thrale received him into his house at Streatham ; an apartment was fitted up for him, companions were invited from London, and he became a constant resident in the family. His celebrity attracted the notice of the king, to whom he was introduced by the librarian of Buckingham House. We are not told that politics had in any way led to this introduction, but it is not impossible that the opinions that Johnson entertained upon the principal questions of the day might have reached the king's ears. For several years he occasionally pub lished political pamphlets. In the autumn of 1773 he made a tour, in company with Mr. Boswell, to the Western Islands of Scotland, of which he published an account. Two years afterwards ho made a short excursion to Paris. The last of his literary labours was ' The Lives of the Poets,' which were completed in 1781. We now take leave of him as an author, and have only to record the few domestic occurrences which took place before the close of his long life. These are for the most part melancholy. His friends Mr. Thrale and Mrs.
Williams preceded him to the grave. In June 1783 he had a para lytic stroke, and in the following November was greatly swollen with the dropsy. During a journey to Derbyshire he ,felt a temporary
relief; but in 1784 be suffered both from dropsy and from asthma. His diseases were evidently irremediable; and the thought of death increased his constitutional melancholy. On Monday the 13th of December 1784 he expired in his house in Bolt Court; on the 20th of the month his remains with due solemnity and a numerous attend ance of his friends were buried in Westminster Abbey, near the foot of Shakepere's monument, and close to the grave of Garrick.
Whether in the deepest poverty or in comparative affluence, Johnson displayed great independence of character ; and his Tory opinions are to be attributed to disinterested conviction, and were in harmony with hie general spirit. He was steady and inflexible iu maintaining the obligations of religion, a sincere and zealous Christian, and, as such, benevolent. But besides these great qualities he pos sessed others of marked littleness. In many respects he seemed a different person at different times. He was intolerant of particular principles; superstitious ; and his mind was at an early period narrowed upon many questions religious and political. He was open to flattery, hard to please, easy to offend, impetuous and irritable. These were the principal blots upon his character, but his great qualities predominated, and he has left far more to admire and revere than to censuro and condemn.
His reasoning was sound, dexterous, and acute; he was seldom imposed upon either by fallacies or exaggerated statements; his per ception was quick his. thoughts were striking and original, and his imagination vivid. In conversation his style was keen and pointed, and his language appropriate; he had also a remarkable facility of illus tration from familiar objects. His wit may be described as logical, and chiefly consisted in dexterously convicting his opponent of absurdity. Conscious of his power, he was fond of dispute, and used to argue for victory. Scarcely any of his contemporaries except Burke was a match for him In such discussions. His written style was eminently periodic; and in order to construct every sentence into a balanced period he frequently introduced superfluous and high. sounding expressions; hence his general style was pompous, heavy, and diffuse ; but in his later works, as the Lives of the Poets,' these faults become much less visible, and particular passages might be selected of almost unmatched excellence. He was also fond of words of Latin derivation, to the exclusion of words of more familiar Saxon origin. His style has often been imitated, and sometimes burlesqued ; but both imitations and burlesques are almost invariably ludicrous failures : as an example of what puerile absurdity even clever writers can bring themselves to believe is an allowable burlesque on Johnson's style we may refer to that in the 'Rejected Addresses.' Johnson's strong and penetrating intellect did not fit him for poetry, except of the satirical order. His 'Irene' is deservedly forgotten ; but his London : an imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal,' contains nervous thoughts expressed in harmonious verse; and his 'Vanity of Human Wishes, being the Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated,' is a fine poetical declamation, though deformed by occasional tautology : it has had the rare fortune of receiving the highest eulogies from two great recent poets of a school wholly different to that of Johnson—Byron and Scott ; the latter of whom says of it, "The deep and pathetic morality of The Vanity of Human Wishes' has often extracted tears from those whose eyes wander dry over pages professedly sentimental :" while Byron wrote, "'Tie a grand poem . . . all the examples and mode of giving them sublime." Among his smaller pieces the two moat remarkable are his verses on the opening of Drury Lane Theatre in 1747, and the stanzas on the death of Mr. Levett. His tale of 'Raseelas' holds an inter mediate place between his poetry and his prose. It is characterised by a tone of pleasing melancholy, and the style, though somewhat artificial, is elegant and harmonious.