been amply fulfilled:--

Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.

The names of many greater writers are inscribed upon the walls of
Westminster Abbey; but scarcely any one lies there whose heart was more
acutely responsive during life to the deepest and tenderest of human
emotions. In visiting that strange gathering of departed heroes and
statesmen and philanthropists and poets, there are many whose words and
deeds have a far greater influence upon our imaginations; but there are
very few whom, when all has been said, we can love so heartily as Samuel
Johnson.



CHAPTER VI.


JOHNSON'S WRITINGS.


It remains to speak of Johnson's position in literature. For reasons
sufficiently obvious, few men whose lives have been devoted to letters
for an equal period, have left behind them such scanty and inadequate
remains. Johnson, as we have seen, worked only under the pressure of
circumstances; a very small proportion of his latter life was devoted to
literary employment. The working hours of his earlier years were spent
for the most part in productions which can hardly be called literary.
Seven years were devoted to the _Dictionary_, which, whatever its
merits, could be a book only in the material sense of the word, and was