of mere caprice; at such a period it will generally be perceived that needless irregularity is the worst of all deformities, and that nothing is so truly elegant in language as the simplicity of unviolated analogy. Rules will, therefore, be observed, so far as they are known and acknowledged: but at the same time, the desire of improvement having been once excited will not remain inactive; and its efforts, unless assisted by knowledge as much as they are prompted by zeal, will not unfrequently be found pernicious; so that the very persons whose intention it is to perfect the instrument of reason will deprave and disorder it unknowingly. At such a time, then, it becomes peculiarly necessary that the analogy of language should be fully examined and understood; that its rules should be carefully laid down; and that it should be clearly known how much it contains which, being already right, should be defended from change and violation; how much it has that demands amendment; and how much that, for fear of greater inconveniences, must, perhaps, be left unaltered, though irregular."

"The effects of the return of spring have been frequently remarked, as well in relation to the human mind as to the animal and vegetable world. The reviving power of this season has been traced from the fields to the herds that inhabit them, and from the lower classes of beings up to man. Gladness and joy are described as prevailing through universal nature, animating the low of the cattle, the carol of the birds, and the pipe of the shepherd."

The Reverend Dr. Knox, master of Tunbridge school, appears to have the imitari aveo of Johnson's style perpetually in his mind; and to his assiduous, though not servile, study of it, we may partly ascribe the extensive popularity of his writings.2

They who build houses and collect costly pictures and furniture with the money of an honest artisan or mechanic will be very glad of emancipation from the hands of a bailiff by a sale of their senatorial suffrage."

But I think the most perfect imitation of Johnson is a professed one, entitled "A Criticism on Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard," said to be written by Mr. Young, professor of Greek, at Glasgow, and of which let him have the credit, unless a better title can be shown. It has not only the particularities of Johnson's style, but that very species of literary discussion and illustration for which he was eminent. Having already quoted so much from others, I shall refer the curious to this performance, with an assurance of much entertainment.*

Yet, whatever merit there may be in any imitations of Johnson's style, every good judge must see that they are obviously different from the original; for all of them are either deficient in its force, or overloaded with its peculiarities; and the powerful sentiment to which it is suited is not to be found.

Johnson's affection for his departed relations seemed to grow warmer as he approached nearer to the time when he might hope to see

leave to offer my particular acknowledgments to the author of a work of uncommon merit and great utility. I know no book which contains, in the same compass, more learning, polite literature, sound sense, accuracy of arrangement, and perspicuity of expression. BOSWELL.

That collection was presented to Dr. Johnson, I believe, by its authors; and I heard him speak very well of it.BOSWELL.

2 It were to be wished that he had imitated that great man in every respect, and had not followed the example of Dr. Adam Smith, in ungraciously attacking his venerable Alma Mater, Oxford. It must, however, be observed, that he is much less to blame than Smith: he only objects to certain particulars Smith, to the whole institution; though indebted for much of his learning to an exhibition which he enjoyed for many years at Baliol College. Neither of them, however, will do any hurt to the noblest university in the world. While I animadvert on what appears to me exceptionable in some of the works of Dr. Knox, I cannot refuse due praise to others of his productions; particularly his sermons, and to the spirit with which he maintains, against presumptuous heretics, the consolatory doctrines peculiar to the Christian Revelation. This he has done in a manner equally strenuous and conciliating. Neither ought I to omit mentioning a remarkable instance of his candour. Notwithstanding the wide difference of our opinions upon the important subject of university education, in a letter to me concerning this work he thus expresses himself: “ I thank you for the very great enter

tainment your Life of Johnson gives me. It is a most valuable work. Yours is a new species of biography. Happy for Johnson that he had so able a recorder of his wit and wisdom." BoSWELL.

3 Dr. Knox, in his "Moral and Literary" abstraction, may be excused for not knowing the political regulations of his country. No senator can be in the hands of a bailiff.BOSWELL. Their houses and goods might be seized under an execution. It was said, and I believe truly, that Sheridan once (or more than once) gave a dinner under those circumstances, and that the bailiffs waited at table. CROKER, 1847.

4 It seems to me to be one of the most insipid and unmeaning volumes ever published. I cannot make out whether it was meant for jest or earnest; but it fails either way, for it has neither pleasantry nor sense. Johnson saw this work, and thus writes of it:-"Of the imitation of my style, in a criticism on Gray's Churchyard, I forgot to make mention. The author is, I believe, utterly unknown, for Mr. Steevens cannot hunt him out. I know little of it, for though it was sent me, I never cut the leaves open. I had a letter with it, representing it to me as my own work; in such an account to the public there may be humour, but to myself it was neither serious nor comical. I suspect the writer to be wrongheaded. As to the noise which it makes, I never heard it, and am inclined to believe that few attacks either of ridicule or invective make much noise but by the help of those that they provoke."- Letters, July 5. 1783.- CROKER.

them again. It probably appeared to him that he should upbraid himself with unkind inattention, were he to leave the world without having paid a tribute of respect to their memory.

DR. JOHNSON TO MR. GREEN, Apothecary, at Lichfield.'

"December 2. 1784.

"DEAR SIR, I have enclosed the epitaph for my father, mother, and brother, to be all engraven on the large size, and laid in the middle aisle in St. Michael's church, which I request the clergyman and churchwardens to permit.

"The first care must be to find the exact place of interment, that the stone may protect the bodies. Then let the stone be deep, massy, and hard; and do not let the difference of ten pounds, or more, defeat our purpose.

"I have enclosed ten pounds, and Mrs. Porter will pay you ten more, which I gave her for the same purpose. What more is wanted shall be sent; and I beg that all possible haste may be made, for I wish to have it done while I am yet alive. Let me know, dear Sir, that you receive this. I am, &c., SAM. JOHNSON."

JOHNSON TO LUCY PORTER.

"December 2. 1784.

"DEAR MADAM,- I am very ill, and desire your prayers. I have sent Mr. Green the epitaph, and a power to call on you for ten pounds.

"I laid this summer a stone over Tetty, in the chapel of Bromley in Kent. The inscription is in Latin [p. 78.], of which this is the English. (Here a translation.) That this is done, I thought it fit that you should know. What care will be taken of us, who can tell? May God pardon and bless us, for Jesus Christ's sake. I am, &c.,

"SAM. JOHNSON."

A relation of Dr. Johnson. See antè, p. 490.- CROKER. 2 It was not done, Dr. Harwood tells us, till after Johnson's death; and when the church was new paved in 1796, the stone was removed, and, strange and shameful to say, is nowhere to be found. The following is the inscription :H. S. E.

MICHAEL JOHNSON,

Vir impavidus, constans, animosus, periculorum immemor, laborum patientissimus ; fiducia christiana fortis, fervidusque, pater-familias apprinne strenuus; bibliopola admodum peritus; mente et libris et negotiis exculta; animo ita firmo, ut, rebus adversis diu conflicatus, nec sibi nec suis defuerit: lingua sic temperata, ut ei nihil quod aures, vel pias, vel castas læsisset, aut dolor, vel voluptas unquam expresserit.

Natus Cubleiæ, in agro Derbiensi, Anno 1656.
Obiit 1731.

Apposita est SARA, conjux.

Antiqua FORDORUM gente oriunda; quam domi sedulam, foris paucis notam; nulli molestam, mentis acumine et judicii subtilitate præcellentem; aliis multum, sibi parum indulgentem: Eternitati semper attentam, omne fere virtutis nomen commendavit.

Nata Nortoniæ Regis, in agro Varvicensi, Anno 1669; Obiit 1759.

Cum NATHANAELE illorum filio, qui natus 1712, cum vires et animi, et corporis multa pollicerentur, Anno 1737, vitam brevem pia morte finivit. — ČROKER, 1831-47.

CHAPTER LXXXII.

1784.

Last Illness, and Death. -- His Will, Funeral, and Burial.

My readers are now, at last, to behold SAMUEL JOHNSON preparing himself for that doom, from which the most exalted powers afford no exDeath had always been to emption to man. him an object of terror: so that, though by no means happy, he still clung to life with an eagerness at which many have wondered. At time when he was ill, he was very much pleased to be told that he looked better. An ingenious member of the Eumelian Club informs me, that upon one occasion, when he said to him that he saw health returning to his cheek, Johnson seized him by the hand and exclaimed, "Sir, you are one of the kindest friends I ever had."

any

His own statement of his views of futurity will appear truly rational; and may, perhaps, impress the unthinking with seriousness.

"You know," says he to Mrs. Thrale, "I never thought confidence with respect to futurity any part of the character of a brave, a wise, or a good man. Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing; wisdom impresses strongly the consciousness of those faults, of which it is, perhaps, itself an aggravation; and goodness, always wishing to be better, and imputing every deficience to criminal negligence, and every fault to voluntary corruption, never dares to suppose the condition of forgiveness fulfilled, nor what is wanting in the crime supplied by penitence.

"This is the state of the best; but what must be the condition of him whose heart will not suffer him to rank himself among the best, or among the good? Such must be his dread of the approaching trial, as will leave him little attention to the opinion of those whom he is leaving for ever; and the serenity that is not felt, it can be no virtue to feign." His great fear of death5, and the strange dark

3 This lady survived Dr. Johnson just thirteen months, She died at Lichfield, in her seventy-first year, January 13. 1786, and bequeathed the principal part of her fortune to the Rev. Mr. Pearson, of Lichfield. MALONE.

4 A club in London, founded by the learned and ingenious physician, Dr. Ash, in honour of whose name it was called Eumelian, from the Greek Evuthias: though it was warmly contended, and even put to a vote, that it should have the more obvious appellation of Fraxinean, from the Latin.BOSWELL.

5 Mrs. Carter, in one of her letters to Mrs. Montagu, says, "I see by the papers that Dr. Johnson is dead. la extent of learning, and exquisite purity of moral writing, he has left no superior, and I fear very few equals. His virtues and his piety were founded on the steadiest of Christian | principles and faith. His faults, I firmly believe, arose from the irritations of a most suffering state of nervous consti tution, which scarcely ever allowed him a moment's ease."

To this passage the editor of Mrs. Carter's Letters subjoins the following note:

"Mrs. Carter told the editor, that in one of the last conversations which she had with this eminent moralist, she told him that she had never known him say any thing con trary to the principles of the Christian religion. He seized her hand with great emotion, exclaiming, You know this, and bear witness to it when I am gone!'"- Letters, vol. ii. p. 234.-CHALMERS. "You wonder," she says in another place, that an undoubted believer and a man of piety should be afraid of death;' but it is such characters who have ever

manner in which Sir John Hawkins' imparts the uneasiness which he expressed on account of offences with which he charged himself, may give occasion to injurious suspicions, as if there had been something of more than ordinary criminality weighing upon his conscience. On that account, therefore, as well as from the regard to truth which he inculcated 2, I am to mention (with all possible respect and delicacy, however), that his conduct, after he came to London, and had associated with Savage and others, was not so strictly virtuous, in one respect, as when he was a younger man. It was well known that his amorous inclinations were uncommonly strong and impetuous. He owned to many of his friends, that he used to take women of the town to taverns, and hear them relate their history. In short, it must not be concealed, that like many other good and pious men, among whom we may place the apostle Paul upon his own authority, Johnson was not free from propensities which were ever "warring against the law of his mind," and that in his combats with them, he was sometimes

Overcome.

-

Here let the profane and licentious pause; let them not thoughtlessly say that Johnson was an hypocrite, or that his principles were not firm, because his practice was not uniformly conformable to what he professed.

Let the question be considered independent of moral and religious associations; and no man will deny that thousands, in many instances, act against conviction. Is a prodigal, for example, an hypocrite, when he owns he is satisfied that his extravagance will bring him to ruin and misery? We are sure he believes it; but immediate inclination, strengthened by indulgence, prevails over that belief in influencing his conduct. Why then shall credit be refused to the sincerity of those who acknowledge their persuasion of moral and religious duty, yet sometimes fail of living as it requires? I heard Dr. Johnson once observe, "There is something noble in publishing truth, though it condemns one's self." 3 And one who said in his presence, "he had no notion of people being in earnest in their good professions, whose practice was not suitable to them," was thus reprimanded by him:-"Sir, are you so grossly ignorant of human nature as not to know that a man may be very sincere in

good principles, without having good practice?" [p. 390.]

But let no man encourage or soothe himself in "presumptuous sin," from knowing that Johnson was sometimes hurried into indulgences which he thought criminal. I have exhibited this circumstance as a shade in so great a character, both from my sacred love of truth, and to show that he was not so weakly scrupulous as he has been represented by those who imagine that the sins, of which a deep sense was upon his mind, were merely such little venial trifles as pouring milk into his tea on Good-Friday. His understanding will be defended by my statement, if his consistency of conduct be in some degree impaired. But what wise man would, for momentary gratifications, deliberately subject himself to suffer such uneasiness as we find was experienced by Johnson in reviewing his conduct as compared with his notion of the ethics of the Gospel? Let the following passages be kept in remembrance :

66

[1766.] "O Lord, let me not sink into total depravity; look down upon me, and rescue me at last from the captivity of sin." (p. 68.)

[1769.] "Almighty and most merciful Father, who hath continued my life from year to year, grant that by longer life I may becoine less desirous of sinful pleasures, and more careful of eternal happiness." (p. 84.)

increase my guilt; but as my age advances, let me [1773.] "Let not my years be multiplied to become more pure in my thoughts, more regular in my desires, and more obedient to thy laws." (p. 120.)

[No date.] "Forgive, O merciful Lord, whatever I have done contrary to thy laws. Give me such a sense of my wickedness as may produce true contrition and effectual repentance: so that when I shall be called into another state, I may be received among the sinners to whom sorrow and reformation have obtained pardon, for Jesus Christ's Amen." (p. 130.)

sake.

Such was the distress of mind, such the penitence of Johnson, in his hours of privacy, and

(ante, p. 50.) quite enough, and perhaps more than he was justified in saying on this topic. The reader will recollect that it has been shown (ante, p. 35. n. 5, and p. 49. n. 3) that the duration, and probably the intensity, of Dr. Johnson's intimacy with Savage have been greatly exaggerated, and so, no doubt, have been the supposed consequences of that intimacy.. - CROKER.

On

3 Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (anté, p. 335.). the same subject, in his letter to Mrs. Thrale, dated November 29. 1783, he makes the following just observation: " Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression; we must always purpose to do more or better than in time past. The mind is enlarged and elevated by mere purposes, though they end as they began, by airy contemplation. We compare and judge, though we do not practise.' BOSWELL.

in his devout approaches to his Maker. His sincerity, therefore, must appear to every candid mind unquestionable.'

It is of essential consequence to keep in view that there was in this excellent man's conduct no false principle of commutation, no deliberate indulgence in sin, in consideration of a counterbalance of duty. His offending and his repenting were distinct and separate2: and when we consider his almost unexampled attention to truth, his inflexible integrity, his constant piety, who will dare to "cast a stone at him?" Besides, let it never be forgotten that he cannot be charged with any offence indicating badness of heart, any thing dishonest, base, or malignant; but that, on the contrary, he was charitable in an extraordinary degree: so that even in one of his own rigid judgments of himself (Easter-eve, 1781), while he says, "I have corrected no external habits;" he is obliged to own, "I hope that since my last communion I have advanced, by pious reflections, in my submission to God, and my benevolence to man." (p. 192.)

I am conscious that this is the most difficult and dangerous part of my biographical work, and I cannot but be very anxious concerning it. I trust that I have got through it, preserving at once my regard to truth, to my

1 Boswell, with a disingenuousness which I am at a loss to account for, selects all these passages (suppressing the dates) and gives them, by his introductory observations, such a peculiar colouring, as to make it appear that Johnson accused himself of sensual licentiousness; whereas I will take upon myself to assert that the entire prayers from which Boswell has garbled these extracts, as well as the general context of the whole volume, if read fairly and candidly, do not afford the slightest colour for the special charge which Boswell makes. Why has Boswell suppressed other passages of corresponding dates which explain the comparatively innocent nature of the errors with which Johnson reproached himself? In 1759, he confesses "idleness and neglect of worship;" in 1760, amidst a long and minute list of self-accusations there is not a hint at criminal indulgences - nor in 1761- nor again in 1762: and during the whole period from which Boswell's extracts are made, it appears from Johnson's specific explanations of them, that his most serious, if not his only offences, were "misspent time," "want of diligence," "time lost in idleness or misspent in unprofitable employments," and the like; and that the only sensual indulgence is lying late in bed, and occasionally too much "addiction to meat and wine." 66 My chief deficiency," he says (1774). "has been, that my life is immethodical." My reigning sin," he says, 1776,* is waste of time and sluggishness." In the Anderdon MSS. there is a note dated in 1784, recording a resolution "to endeavour to conquer scruples; and in the Rose MSS. of a much earlier date, the following

"PRAYER AGAINST SCRUples.

"O Lord, who wouldst that all men should be saved, and who knowest that without thy grace we can do nothing acceptable to thee, have mercy upon me. Enable me to break the chain of my sins, to reject sensuality in thought, and to overcome and suppress vain scruples; and to use such diligence in lawful employment as may enable me to support myself and do good to others. O Lord, forgive me the time lost in idleness; pardon the sins which I have committed, and grant that I may redeem the time misspent, and be reconciled to thee by true repentance, that I may live and die in peace, and be received to everlasting happiness. Take not from me, O Lord, thy Holy Spirit, but let me have support and comfort, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

"Transe. June 26. 1768. Of this prayer there is no date, nor can I conjecture when it was composed." — Johnson.

This prayer, written long before Boswell became acquainted with Johnson, seems to me a complete answer to the inferences extorted by Boswell from the garbled extracts

friend, and to the interests of virtue and religion. Nor can I apprehend that more harm can ensue from the knowledge of the irregularities of Johnson, guarded as I have stated it, than from knowing that Addison and Parnell were intemperate in the use of wine; which he himself, in his Lives of those cele brated writers and pious men, has not forborne to record.3

It is not my intention to give a very minute detail of the particulars of Johnson's remaining days, of whom it was now evident that the crisis was fast approaching, when he must "die like men, and fall like one of the princes." Yet it will be instructive, as well as gratifying to the curiosity of my readers, to record a few circumstances, on the authenticity of which they may perfectly rely, as I have been at the utmost pains to obtain an accurate account of his last illness, from the best authority.

Dr. Heberden, Dr. Brocklesby, Dr. Warren3, and Dr. Butter, physicians, generously attended him, without accepting any fees, as did Mr. Cruikshank, surgeon; and all that could be done from professional skill and ability was tried, to prolong a life so truly valuable. He himself, indeed, having, on account of his very bad constitution, been perpetually applying himself to medical inquiries, united his own efforts

of the later prayers. Can we suppose, that while thus reproaching himself with indolence and scruples, he was habitually guilty of sensual depravity? — CROKER.

2 Dr. Johnson related, with very earnest approbation, a story of a gentleman, who, in an impulse of passion, overcame the virtue of a young woman. When she said to him, "I am afraid we have done wrong!" he answered," Yes, we have done wrong; for I would not debauch her mind.” – BOSWELL.

3 This is a poor and disingenuous defence for a very grievous error. It is one thing to repeat—as Dr. Johnson did, historically, what all the world knew, and few were inclined to blame seriously-that Parnell and Addison loved a cheerful glass

"Narratur et prisci Catonis

Sæpe mero caluisse virtus."

But it is quite another thing to insinuate oneself into a man's confidence, to follow him for twenty years like his shadow, to note his words and actions like a spy, to ransack his most secret papers, and scrutinize and garble even his conscientious confessions, and then, with all the sinister authority which such a show of friendship must confer, to accuse him of low and filthy guilt, supposed to have been committed a quarter of a century before the informer and his calumniated friend had ever met, and which, consequently, Boswell could only have had from hearsay or from guess, and which all personal testimony and all the documentary evidence seem to disprove. Boswell must have been actuated by some secret motive, or labouring under a morbid delusion, when he thus regarded these wanton, and, I conscientiously believe, calumnious, slanders on his illustrious friend, as conducive to interest of virtue and religion," and, above all," of truth.” I entreat any reader who may at all question the validity of my charges against Boswell, and my defence of Dr. Johnson on this point, to refer to the volume of Prayers and Meditations itself, which I pledge myself will effectually refute all Boswell's extraordinary imputations, — CROKER.

the

4 The particulars which Mr. Boswell's absence, and the jealousy between him and some of Johnson's other friends, prevented his being able to give, I have supplied in the Appendix. CROKER.

5 Mr. Green (p. 490.) related that when some of Johnson's friends desired that Dr. Warren should be called in, he said they might call in whom they pleased; and when Warren was called, at his going away Johnson said, "You have come in at the eleventh hour, but you shall be paid the same with

your fellow-labourers. Francis, put into Dr. Warren's coach a copy of the English Poets."- CROKER.

with those of the gentlemen who attended him; and imagining that the dropsical collection of water which oppressed him might be drawn off by making incisions in his body, he, with his usual resolute defiance of pain, cut deep, when he thought that his surgeon had done it too tenderly.'

About eight or ten days before his death, when Dr. Brocklesby paid him his morning visit, he seemed very low and desponding, and said, "I have been as a dying man all night." He then emphatically broke out in the words of Shakspeare

"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff,
Which weighs upon the heart?"

Having asked Dr. Brocklesby what would be a proper annuity to a favourite servant, and being answered that it must depend on the circumstances of the master; and that in the case of a nobleman fifty pounds a year was considered as an adequate reward for many years' faithful service; "Then," said Johnson," shall I be nobilissimus, for I mean to leave Frank seventy pounds a year, and I desire you to tell him so." It is strange, however, to think, that Johnson was not free from that general weakness of being averse to execute a will, so that he delayed it from time to time; and had it not been for Sir John Hawkins's repeatedly urging it, I think it is probable that his kind resolution would not have been fulfilled. After making one, which, as Sir John Hawkins informs us, extended no further than the promised annuity, Johnson's final

from the same great poet,

66

Therein the patient

Must minister to himself."

Johnson expressed himself much satisfied with the application.

On another day after this, when talking on the subject of prayer, Dr. Brocklesby repeated from Juvenal,

"Orandum est, ut sit mens sana in corpore sano," and so on to the end of the tenth satire; but in running it quickly over, he happened, in the line,

"Qui spatium vitæ extremum inter munera ponat," to pronounce supremum for extremum; at which Johnson's critical ear instantly took offence, and discoursing vehemently on the unmetrical effect of such a lapse, he showed himself as full as ever of the spirit of the grammarian. Having no other relations 3, it had been for

some time Johnson's intention to make a liberal

provision for his faithful servant, Mr. Francis Barber, whom he looked upon as particularly under his protection, and whom he had all along treated truly as an humble friend.

1 This bold experiment Sir John Hawkins has related in such a manner as to suggest a charge against Johnson of intentionally hastening his end; a charge so very inconsistent with his character in every respect, that it is injurious even to refute it, as Sir John has thought it necessary to do. It is evident, that what Johnson did in hopes of relief indicated an extraordinary eagerness to retard his dissolution. -BOSWELL.

2 Mr. Boswell has omitted to notice the line, for the sake of which Dr. Brocklesby probably introduced the quotation,

"Fortem posce animum et mortis terrore carentem! "'* The whole passage is thus paraphrased by Dryden :[Be thy prayers] confined

To health of body and content of mind;
A soul that can securely death defy,
And count it Nature's privilege to die;
Serene and manly, hardened to sustain
The load of life, and exercised in pain!"

Juvenal, Sat. 356. — CROKER, 1847.

3 The author in a former page has shown the injustice of Sir John Hawkins's charge against Johnson, with respect to a person of the name of Heely, whom he has inaccurately

a Will and Codicil, of which copies are subjoined.

"In the name of God. Amen. I, Samuel Johnson, being in full possession of my faculties, but fearing this night may put an end to my life, do ordain this my last will and testament. I bequeath to God a soul polluted by many sins, but I hope purified by Jesus Christ. I leave seven hundred and fifty pounds in the hands of Bennet Langton, Esq.; three hundred pounds in the hands of Mr. Barclay and Mr. Perkins, brewers; one hundred and fifty pounds in the hands of Dr. Percy, bishop of Dromore; one thousand pounds, three per cent. annuities in the public funds; and one hundred pounds now lying by me in ready money: all these before-mentioned sums and property I leave, I say, to Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir John Hawkins, and Dr. William Scott, of Doctors' Commons, in trust, for the following uses: say, to pay to the representatives of the late William Innys, bookseller, in St. Paul's Churchyard, the sum of two hundred pounds; to Mrs. White, my female servant, one hundred pounds stock in the three per cent. annuities aforesaid. The rest of the aforesaid sums of money and property, together with my books, plate, and household furniture, I leave to the beforementioned Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir John Hawkins, and Dr. William Scott, also in trust, to be applied, after paying my debts, to the use of Francis Barber,

That is to

represented as a relation of Johnson's. (See p. 789.) That Johnson was anxious to discover whether any of his relations were living, is evinced by the following letter, written not long before he made his will : —

"JOHNSON TO THE REV. DR. VYSE,
"In Lambeth.

"Bolt Court, Nov. 29. 1784. "SIR,-I am desirous to know whether Charles Scrimshaw, of Woodscase (I think), in your father's neighbourhood, be now living; what is his condition, and where he may be found. If you can conveniently make any inquiry about him, and can do it without delay, it will be an act of great kindness to me, he being very nearly related to me. I beg [you] to pardon this trouble. I am, &c., SAM. JOHNSON."

In conformity to the wish expressed in the preceding letter, an inquiry was made; but no descendants of Charles Scrimshaw or of his sisters were discovered to be living. Dr. Vyse informs me, that Dr. Johnson told him," he was disappointed in the inquiries he had made after his relations." There is therefore no ground whatsoever for supposing that he was unmindful of them, or neglected them.- MALONE.