though it allows that a considerable progress had been made. Dr.
Williams, after all his labour and expense, died in a short time after,
a melancholy instance of unrewarded merit. His daughter possessed
uncommon talents, and, though blind, had an alacrity of mind that made
her conversation agreeable, and even desirable. To relieve and appease
melancholy reflexions, Johnson took her home to his house in Gough
square. In 1755, Garrick gave her a benefit play, which produced two
hundred pounds. In 1766, she published, by subscription, a quarto volume
of miscellanies, and increased her little stock to three hundred pounds.
That fund, with Johnson's protection, supported her, through the
remainder of her life.

During the two years in which the Rambler was carried on, the Dictionary
proceeded by slow degrees. In May, 1752, having composed a prayer,
preparatory to his return from tears and sorrow to the duties of life,
he resumed his grand design, and went on with vigour, giving, however,
occasional assistance to his friend, Dr. Hawkesworth, in the Adventurer,
which began soon after the Rambler was laid aside. Some of the most
valuable essays in that collection were from the pen of Johnson. The
Dictionary was completed towards the end of 1754; and, Cave being then
no more, it was a mortification to the author of that noble addition to
our language, that his old friend did not live to see the triumph of his
labours. In May, 1755, that great work was published. Johnson was
desirous that it should come from one who had obtained academical
honours; and for that purpose his friend, the rev. Thos. Warton,
obtained for him, in the preceding month of February, a diploma for a
master's degree, from the university of Oxford.--Garrick, on the
publication of the Dictionary, wrote the following lines:

"Talk of war with a Briton, he'll boldly advance,