antecedent or contemporary writers, he is inferior to them. A German
critic of our own days, Schlegel, has surpassed him even in that which
he has done best.

From Boswell I have collected an account of the little journeys with
which he from time to time relieved the uniformity of his life. They
will be told in order as they occur, and I hope will not weary the
reader. The days of a scholar are frequently not distinguished by
varieties even as unimportant as these. Johnson found his mind grow
stagnant by a constant residence in the neighbourhood of Charing-cross
itself, where he thought human happiness at its flood: and once, when
moving rapidly along the road in a carriage with Boswell, cried out to
his fellow-traveller, "Sir, life has few things better than this." In
the winter of 1766 he went to Oxford, where he resided for a month, and
formed an intimacy with Chambers, afterwards one of the judges in India.
During this period, no publication appeared under his own name; but he
furnished Miss Williams with a Preface to her Poems, and Adams with
another for his Treatise on the Globes; and wrote the dedication to the
King, prefixed to Gough's London and Westminster Improved. He seems to
have been always ready to supply a dedication for a friend, a task which
he executed with more than ordinary courtliness. In this way, he told
Boswell, that he believed he "had dedicated to all the royal family
round." But in his own case, either pride hindered him from prefixing to
his works what he perhaps considered as a token of servility, or his
better judgment restrained him from appropriating, by a particular
inscription to one individual, that which was intended for the use of
mankind.

Of Johnson's interview with George III. I shall transcribe the account
as given by Boswell; with which such pains were taken to make it