followed. Fontenelle, D'Alembert, and monsieur Thomas, have left models
in this kind of composition. They have embalmed the dead. But it is
true, that they had incitements and advantages, even at a distant day,
which could not, by any diligence, be obtained by Dr. Johnson. The wits
of France had ample materials. They lived in a nation of critics, who
had, at heart, the honour done to their country by their poets, their
heroes, and their philosophers. They had, besides, an academy of
belles-lettres, where genius was cultivated, refined, and encouraged.
They had the tracts, the essays, and dissertations, which remain in the
memoirs of the academy, and they had the speeches of the several members,
delivered at their first admission to a seat in that learned assembly.
In those speeches the new academician did ample justice to the memory of
his predecessor; and though his harangue was decorated with the colours
of eloquence, and was, for that reason, called panegyric, yet, being
pronounced before qualified judges, who knew the talents, the conduct,
and morals of the deceased, the speaker could not, with propriety,
wander into the regions of fiction. The truth was known, before it was
adorned. The academy saw the marble before the artist polished it. But
this country has had no academy of literature. The public mind, for
centuries, has been engrossed by party and faction; "by the madness of
many for the gain of a few;" by civil wars, religious dissensions, trade
and commerce, and the arts of accumulating wealth. Amidst such
attentions, who can wonder that cold praise has been often the only
reward of merit? In this country, Dr. Nathaniel Hodges, who, like the
good bishop of Marseilles, drew purer breath amidst the contagion of the
plague in London, and, during the whole time, continued in the city,
administering medical assistance, was suffered, as Johnson used to
relate, with tears in his eyes, to die for debt, in a gaol. In this
country, the man who brought the New river to London, was ruined by that
noble project; and, in this country, Otway died for want, on Tower hill;