"The essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute my own
intentions, will be found exactly conformable to the precepts of
christianity, without any accommodation to the licentiousness and levity
of the present age. I, therefore, look back on this part of my work with
pleasure, which no man shall diminish or augment. I shall never envy the
honours which wit and learning obtain in any other cause, if I can be
numbered among the writers who have given ardour to virtue, and
confidence to truth." The whole number of essays amounted to two hundred
and eight. Addison's, in the Spectator, are more in number, but not half
in point of quantity: Addison was not bound to publish on stated days;
he could watch the ebb and flow of his genius, and send his paper to the
press, when his own taste was satisfied. Johnson's case was very
different. He wrote singly and alone. In the whole progress of the work
he did not receive more than ten essays. This was a scanty contribution.
For the rest, the author has described his situation: "He that condemns
himself to compose on a stated day, will often bring to his task an
attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed,
a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease: he
will labour on a barren topick, till it is too late to change it; or, in
the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance,
which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine
or reduce." Of this excellent production, the number sold on each day
did not amount to five hundred: of course, the bookseller, who paid the
author four guineas a week, did not carry on a successful trade. His
generosity and perseverance deserve to be commended; and happily, when
the collection appeared in volumes, were amply rewarded. Johnson lived
to see his labours nourish in a tenth edition. His posterity, as an
ingenious French writer has said, on a similar occasion, began in his
life-time.