in a well-managed nursery, came across him, he was smitten as if by enchantment. His mind dwindled away under the spell from gigantic elevation to dwarfish littleness. Those who had lately been admiring its amplitude and its force were now as much astonished at its strange narrowness and feebleness as the fisherman in the Arabian tale when he saw the genie, whose stature had overshadowed the whole seacoast, and whose might seemed equal to a contest with armies, contract himself to the dimensions of his small prison, and lie there the hopeless slave of the charm of Solomon.

As we close Boswell's book, the club-room is before us, and the table on which stands the omelet for Nugent and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads which live forever on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the spectacles of Burke, and the tall, thin form of Langton; the courtly sneer of Beauclerk, and the genial smile of Garrick; Gibbon tapping his snuff-box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure, which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we have been brought up-the gigantic body, the huge, massy face, seamed with the scars of disease; the brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the gray wig with a scorched foretop; the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form rolling; we hear it puffing; and then comes the "Why, sir!" and the "What then, sir?" and the "No, sir!" and the "You don't see your way through the question, sir !"

EXTRACTS FROM CARLYLE'S ESSAY UPON BOSWELL'S "LIFE OF JOHNSON."

THE great man does, in good truth, belong to his own age-nay, more so than any other man; being properly the synopsis and epitome of such age with its interests and influences; but belongs likewise to all ages, otherwise he is not great. What was transitory in him passes away; and an immortal part remains, the significance of which is in strict speech inexhaustible-as that of every real object is. Aloft, conspicuous, on his enduring basis, he stands there, serene, unaltering; silently addresses to every new generation a new lesson and monition. Well is his life worth writing, worth interpreting; and ever, in the new dialect of new times, of rewriting and reinterpreting.

Of such chosen men was Samuel Johnson: not ranking among the highest, or even the high, yet distinctly admitted into that sacred band; whose existence was no idle Dream, but a Reality which he transacted awake; nowise a Clothes-horse and Patent Digester, but a genuine Man. By nature he was gifted for the noblest of earthly tasks, that of Priesthood and Guidance of mankind; by destiny, moreover, he was appointed to this task, and did actually, according to strength, fulfil the same: so that always the question, How; in what spirit; under what shape? remains for us to be asked and answered concerning him. For as the highest Gospel was a Biography, so is the Life of every good man still an indubitable Gospel, and preaches to the eye and heart and whole man, so that Devils even must believe and tremble, these gladdest tidings: "Man is heaven-born; not the thrall of Circumstances, of Necessity, but the victorious subduer thereof: behold how he can become the ‘Announcer of himself and of his Freedom;' and is ever what the Thinker has named him, 'the Messias of Nature."" Yes, Reader, all this that thou hast so often heard about, "force of circumstances," "the creature of the time," " balancing of mo

tives," and who knows what melancholy stuff to the like purport, wherein thou, as in a nightmare Dream, sittest paralyzed, and hast no force left-was in very truth, if Johnson and waking men are to be credited, little other than a hagridden vision of death-sleep; some half-fact, more fatal at times than a whole falsehood. Shake it off; awake; up and be doing, even as it is given thee!

The Contradiction which yawns wide enough in every Life, which it is the meaning and task of Life to reconcile, was in Johnson's wider than in most. Seldom, for any man, has the contrast between the ethereal heavenward side of things, and the dark sordid earthward, been more glaring: whether we look at Nature's work with him or Fortune's, from first to last, heterogeneity, as of sunbeams and miry clay, is on all hands manifest. Whereby indeed, only this was declared, That much Life had been given him; many things to triumph over, a great work to do. Happily also he did it; better than the most.

Nature had given him a high, keen-visioned, almost poetic soul; yet withal imprisoned it in an inert, unsightly body: he that could never rest had not limbs that would move with him, but only roll and waddle; the inward eye, allpenetrating, all-embracing, must look through bodily windows that were dim, half-blinded; he so loved men, and never once saw the human face divine!" Not less did he prize the love of men; he was eminently social; the approbation of his fellows was dear to him, "valuable," as he owned, "if from the meanest of human beings:" yet the first impression he produced on every man was to be one of aversion, almost of disgust. By Nature it was further ordered that the imperious Johnson should be born poor: the ruler-soul, strong in its native royalty, generous, uncontrollable, like the lion of the woods, was to be housed, then, in such a dwelling-place: of Disfigurement, Disease, and lastly of a Poverty which itself made him the servant of servants. Thus was the born king likewise a born slave:

the divine spirit of Music must awake imprisoned amidst dull-croaking universal Discords; the Ariel finds himself encased in the coarse hulls of a Caliban. So is it more or less, we know (and thou, O Reader, knowest and feelest even now), with all men: yet with the fewest men in any such degree as with Johnson.

Fortune, moreover, which had so managed his first appearance in the world, lets not her hand lie idle, or turn the other way, but works unweariedly in the same spirit, while he is journeying through the world. What such a mind, stamped of Nature's noblest metal, though in so ungainly a die, was specially and best of all fitted for, might still be a question. To none of the world's few Incorporated Guilds could he have adjusted himself without difficulty, without distortion; in none been a Guild-Brother well at ease. Perhaps, if we look to the strictly practical nature of his faculty, to the strength, decision, method that manifests itself in him, we may say his calling was rather toward Active than Speculative life; that as Statesman (in the higher, now obsolete sense), Lawgiver, Ruler-in short as Doer of the Work, he had shone even more than as Speaker of the Word. His honesty of heart, his courageous temper, the value he set on things outward and material, might have made him a King among Kings. Had the golden age of those new French Prophets, when it shall be à chacun selon sa capacité, à chaque capacité selon ses œuvres, but arrived! Indeed, even in our brazen and Birmingham-lacquer age, he himself regretted that he had not become a Lawyer, and risen to be Chancellor, which he might well have done. However, it was otherwise appointed. To no man does Fortune throw open all the kingdoms of this world, and say: It is thine; choose where thou wilt dwell! To the most she opens hardly the smallest cranny or dog-hutch, and says, not without asperity: There, that is thine, while thou canst keep it; nestle thyself there, and bless Heaven! Alas, men must fit themselves into many things: some forty years

ago, for instance, the noblest and ablest Man in all the British lands might be seen, not swaying the royal sceptre or the Pontiff's censor on the pinnacle of the World, but gauging ale-tubs in the little burgh of Dumfries! Johnson came a little nearer the mark than Burns: but with him, too, "Strength was mournfully denied its arena;" he too had to fight Fortune at strange odds, all his life long.

Johnson's disposition for royalty (had the Fates so ordered it) is well seen in early boyhood. "His favorites," says Boswell," used to receive very liberal assistance from him; and such was the submission and deference with which he was treated, that three of the boys, of whom Mr. Hector was sometimes one, used to come in the morning as his humble attendants and carry him to school. One in the middle stooped, while he sat upon his back, and one on each side supported him; and thus he was borne triumphant." The purfly, sand-blind lubber and blubber, with his open mouth, and face of bruised honeycomb; yet already dominant, imperial, irresistible! Not in the "King's-chair" (of human arms), as we see, do his three satellites carry him along: rather on the Tyrant's-saddle, the back of his fellow-creature, must he ride prosperous! The child is father of the man. He who had seen fifty years into coming Time would have felt that little spectacle of mischievous school-boys to be a great one. For us who look back on it, and what followed it, now from afar, there arise questions enough: How looked these urchins? What jackets and galligaskins had they? felt head-gear, or of dog-skin leather? What was old Lichfield doing then? what thinking?-and so on, through the whole series of Corporal Trim's "auxiliary verbs." A picture of it all fashions itself together-only, unhappily, we have no brush and no fingers.

Boyhood is now passed; the ferula of Pedagogue waves harmless in the distance: Samuel has struggled up to uncouth bulk and youthhood, wrestling with Disease and Poverty all the way, which two continue still his companions.